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Message: <br /><br /> If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/34594/full/34594/a-tale-of-one-torah-sad-saga-in-russia-70-years-ago-at-heart-of-new-palo-al/ <br /><br /> <b>A tale of one Torah: Sad saga in Russia 70 years ago at heart of new Palo Alto scroll</b> <br /> Friday, March 21, 2008 | by stacey palevsky <br /><br /><p>When Rochel Levin was a young girl, her father was arrested.<br /><br /> This was not uncommon. After all, she was a child in early 20th-century Russia, where Jews could not practice their faith freely.<br /><br /> Her father, Yitzchak Elchanan Shagalov, was a rabbi, a mohel and a Chabadnick. He refused to give up any of those identities just because the government said so.<br /><br /> "Jews without Torah," he would say to his children, "are like fish without water."<br /><br /> The authorities arrested him one day in the late 1930s. His wife, Mariache Garelic, always thought he would be released from prison and return to his family.<br /><br /> He never did.<br /><br /> For years, Rochel didn't know what became of her father, but his love of Judaism remained within her spirit.<br /><br /> On March 30, Chabad of the Greater South Bay will celebrate his memory with the arrival of a new Torah scroll at their Palo Alto synagogue.<br /><br /> Chabad's Rabbi Yosef Levin is the son of Rochel Levin-Liberow, who recently said from her home in London that she had always dreamt that "when I grew up, I would write a Torah."<br /><br /> She turned 80 last year, around the same time that her mother, a legendary rebbetzin in the Lubavitch world, died at age 106 with 600 descendents.<br /><br /> Ten years earlier, Levin-Liberow had learned the truth about her father: He had been shot soon after being arrested for counter-revolutionary activity.<br /><br /> Having lost her mother and now knowing the truth about her father, Levin-Liberow decided it was time to have a Torah made in memory of her parents, especially for her father, who was killed because of his love of the Hebrew words within the Torah's parchment.<br /><br /> So last year, Levin-Liberow contacted her son, the rabbi at Chabad of the Greater South Bay, and told him she wanted to commission a scribe who could write a Torah in memory of her parents.<br /><br /> Rabbi Levin, fortunately, knew a scribe in Israel.<br /><br /> "I explained that my mother decided to write this Torah in memory of her parents," he said, "and as an expression of gratitude for God for making it through."<br /><br /> One year after that conversation, Levin flew to Israel to pick up the scroll.<br /><br /> On Sunday, March 30, Chabad of the Greater South Bay will celebrate its new Torah. Levin-Liberow — who turns 81 the following day — will fly in from England for the event, as will about 20 other relatives from around the globe.<br /><br /> At 1:30 p.m., people will gather at 2477 Louis Road in Palo Alto. They will proceed down Louis Road, dancing and singing and carrying the new Torah scroll underneath a chuppah until they reach the Chabad Center down the street.<br /><br /> People will bring Chabad's two existing Torahs outside to greet the new one, after which they'll eat and shmooze.<br /><br /> "Just to be able to have a new Torah is a very special thing," Yosef Levin said. "But this Torah in particular, it's like out of the ashes. It's a very special story."<br /><br /> </p>

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