Living Higher: Issue 931

The aron kodesh once stood in the shul of the Maharam of Padua who served as rav in Padua, Italy, in 1550. But for hundreds of years, the beautiful aron kodesh that had once been witness to a thriving Italian Jewish life lay forgotten and forlorn. In the late 20th century, when an Israeli historian visited the old synagogue — which had since been retrofitted to be a museum — he found the freestanding aron kodesh in the former synagogue’s attic. Years of neglect had left it full of dust, but remarkably, it was wholly intact.

The historian had it disassembled and brought to Israel, where he set it up in his villa. After he moved, an American businessman with ties to the historian’s family arranged for the aron kodesh to be brought to Lakewood and installed in the Torah Links Center’s beis medrash.

It was a poignant move, for the aron kodesh’s story is the story of the yeshivah’s talmidim. A community once fiercely committed to Hashem’s Torah and mitzvos all but abandoned their way of life, dazzled by the lure of the outside world and Italian culture. Their aron kodesh was reduced to nothing more than a relic of the past, empty of the life-giving treasures it once contained. Now, generations later, a renaissance of a different sort is taking place in the yeshivah. Students who grew up in the lap of secular culture are now returning to their rightful heritage, and, like that beautiful aron kodesh, are ready to lovingly embrace the Torah once more.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 931)