KATRINA'S AFTERMATH?
Rabbi Navigates Waters to Retrieve Holy Texts?
Search-and-rescue expert Isaac Leider answers a call to recover a
synagogue's Torahs for restoration or an appropriate burial.?
By Solomon Moore Times Staff Writer September 14, 2005?
NEW
ORLEANS - Satisfied that most of his congregants were safe, the rabbi began
to worry about the Torahs. Rabbi Yisroel Shiff of Congregation Beth Israel
in New Orleans hoped that his Orthodox synagogue's holy scrolls would come
through Hurricane Katrina undamaged. But if not, he wanted them buried in
the appropriate manner. "We bury them with honor, as we would someone we
care about - the Torah is the life's blood of our community," Shiff said.
The rabbi, who evacuated to Tennessee before Katrina hit, knew that the
temple near the shores of Lake Pontchartrain had been flooded. But, he said,
"we believe in miracles. Maybe the water didn't reach the scrolls." He
called Rabbi Isaac Leider, who had spent five years in Israel with the
search-and-rescue squad Zak'a, performing sacramental cleanup duties at bus
bombings and other sites. Leider - who also volunteered his services at the
World Trade Center, the TWA Flight 800 crash site and other tragedies - now
works with a Jewish ambulance service in New York City and New Jersey. He
had come to New Orleans to make sure that the bodies of any Jews who died as
a result of Hurricane Katrina were treated according to religious law. But
he also focused on the task of retrieving the congregation's holy scrolls.
Shiff said at least one of the Torahs had been there when he attended the
synagogue as a child - he doesn't know exactly how old the scrolls are. "We
had them appraised and were told our scrolls are much older than 100 years,"
he said. "They must have come from Europe. The congregation is 101 years
old, and they have been with them at least that long." Often, Torahs are the
most valuable artifacts of a Jewish congregation. A new Torah scroll can
cost $50,000. Older scrolls - and many are hundreds of years old - often are
worth much more. But their value is not based on the material. "The Torah is
the basis of the Jewish religion," Leider said. "Last week, we were saving
lives, but once that was done, this became just as important." Said Shiff:
"The Torah scrolls are particularly precious to people who live by their
words." The Torah tells the story of Moses as he led the Jews out of Egypt.
The text, which Christians know as the Old Testament, also holds the most
important laws of the Jewish faith. "The Torah is not stored in a computer
file; we don't copy them on copy machines," said
Rabbi
Shlomo Gertzulin, vice president of Agudath Israel of America, an
association of several hundred Orthodox congregations that sponsored
Leider's recovery efforts. "They are only written by the most devout and
knowledgeable scribes." A Torah is handwritten by a rabbinical scribe
trained for years in the art of Hebrew calligraphy. There are centuries-old
requirements on the exact size and spacing of characters, and special rites
associated with words representing the Ten Commandments and Moses. It can
take as long as a year for a scribe - using a quill and sacred ink made from
an age-old recipe - to complete a Torah. The scrolls must be made from
cowhide, thinned to a leathery parchment, then woven together with leather
thread to complete the text. The scroll is then wrapped around wooden rods
that often are capped with pure silver. Each Torah, the five books of the
Jewish Scriptures, is then cloaked in purple velvet and stored in an ark, or
cabinet; it is removed only for congregational prayers and on the high holy
days of Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah. And when they are damaged beyond
repair - by fire or flood, for example - they must be buried according to
Jewish tradition. There were about 10,000 Jews in New Orleans. Many of their
families had lived there since the 19th century, emigrating from Europe to
open businesses in what was then a thriving port city. Several other Jewish
organizations, including Chabad, a large Orthodox group based in New York,
also sent squads of rabbis and recovery specialists to retrieve the precious
texts; funds are being raised for further efforts. On Sunday, Leider drove
with colleagues from his New York ambulance team toward Congregation Beth
Israel. But about five miles south of the synagogue, they came to the edge
of the floodwaters. Although the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had drained
much of the city, many areas remained immersed in dark, fetid water. Leider
and other Jewish leaders called on the government to assist them. They met
with officials from the Department of Homeland Security, the Louisiana
National Guard and the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Baton Rouge,
La. By Tuesday morning, the water had receded enough to enter the synagogue,
so Leider hired a helicopter to fly him within a mile of Congregation Beth
Israel. There he met with a search-and-rescue team from Menlo Park, Calif.,
that FEMA had charged with retrieving the scrolls. The synagogue is on Canal
Boulevard on the northern edge of the city, a few blocks from Lake
Pontchartrain; it sits between two canals. Leider and the rescue team
climbed aboard a pair of rubber rafts with outboard motors and started
toward the synagogue through flooded streets, barred in places by brambles
and rusting cars. They drifted past stately homes, all flooded and empty,
marked with red spray paint to indicate that they had been searched. The
synagogue was still
swamped
by 4 feet of water. Wearing waist-high rubber waders and a yarmulke, Leider
followed the rescue squad into the synagogue and made his way to the
sanctuary. The wooden door swung open, slowed by the water. A high-water
mark, at 7 feet, lined the walls. Leider inched his way through aisles
filled with saturated seat cushions, broken glass, and overturned pews and
podiums. The rabbi waded to the front of the hall and opened the ark that
held six Torah scrolls. He also found a white prayer shawl and the silver
adornments for the scrolls. He cradled them in his arms and made his way
toward the rafts. "Out of six, only two are restorable," Leider said. "I'm
glad that we did this, but I'm disappointed. It's bad to see them in this
condition." _____________