A scroll to share: Jewish Milestones dedicates a lending Torah to community

Friday, December 12, 2008 | by stacey palevsky

The Torah arrived in Berkeley from Israel in a large TV box. All traces of the previous technological inhabitant had been removed, save for one slip of paper that was accidentally left behind. It read: "Imagine the possibilities; the centerpiece of your home."

When Rachel Brodie unpacked the Torah to find that paper at the bottom of the box, she thought it most appropriate.

After all, she had been imagining the possibilities for years. As the director of Jewish Milestones — a Berkeley-based nonprofit that guides unaffiliated individuals and families through lifecycle events — she had longed to provide the Bay Area Jewish community with a lending Torah.

"The Torah is meant to be looked at, touched, worked with. It's meant to be accessed. And in essence, that's our mission," Brodie said.

"Jewish Milestones is all about access. We want to be there with a Torah when people need it."

The scroll was publicly unveiled Dec. 7. An estimated 150 people attended the dedication ceremony for the lending Torah, which has been available for use since it arrived in Berkeley in July. Still, staff at Jewish Milestones wanted a formal way to celebrate — officially and joyously — the Torah's arrival in the community.

Spirits ran high during the ceremony at the Berkeley Hillside Club. The Sunday afternoon program aimed to educate and engage the audience with song, prayer and humor, courtesy of keynote speaker Jen Taylor Friedman. A soferet (Torah scribe), Friedman is the first woman known to have completed the writing of an entire Torah scroll (though not the one purchased by Jewish Milestones).

"We've had Torahs as long as we've had Jews, and we've had women as long as we've had Jews — I'm just putting them together," Friedman said as the audience chuckled.

On a more serious note, she added, "It is my privilege to be here and bring this Torah into obligation."

Jewish Milestones was born in 2004. Since then, the organization has worked with Jews from every region of the Bay Area, helping those who do not belong to a synagogue incorporate Jewish ritual into events such as the birth of a baby, bar and bat mitzvahs, weddings and funerals.

Before co-founders and Jewish educators Brodie and Julie Batz started their nonprofit, they interviewed dozens of people to determine their needs. They found that most who conducted a lifecycle ritual outside of a synagogue encountered "significant barriers to recreating the ritual," Batz said. Sometimes, that hurdle was not having access to a Torah.

"We wanted to remove any kind of obstacle for people to have lifecycle rituals," Batz said. "If we can make it easier for people to mark a moment in their lives in a Jewish way, by having a Torah they can easily reserve and borrow, then that's one less thing they need to worry about when they ask themselves, 'Can I really do this?' "

Before now, Jewish Milestones borrowed Torahs from synagogues.

But the move to get one of its own began in January 2006, when Isaac Pollan had his bar mitzvah with the help of Jewish Milestones, using its ark and a Torah borrowed from a local synagogue. Pollan asked Brodie and Batz, his bar mitzvah tutors, why they didn't get their own Torah, and gave them $100 from his bar mitzvah gift money.

"I knew I had to do some sort of mitzvah, and when I thought about how hard it was to find a Torah we could use, I figured that it would be much easier for everybody after me if we could have a Torah that could be our own, without all that hassle," said Pollan, now 16 and a sophomore at the Marin Academy in San Rafael.

Six months later, Brodie and Batz set up an official Torah fund. And six months after that, they'd raised the $12,000 needed to purchase a used and restored Torah.

"I'm so proud, it's like my $100 is all grown up," Pollan said. "It's such a great feeling to see something small blossom into something so great."

About 130 individuals and families donated to the cause. For $36, a donor could choose a word in honor of a loved one; for $500, they could select an entire parshah.

Ellen Brosbe dedicated the word "supported" from Exodus to Jewish educator Janet Harris in appreciation of her 30 years of friendship. Jewish studies professor Marc Dollinger and his family dedicated a verse from Leviticus, "Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof."

The dedications were yet another way to give the community ownership of the lending Torah, Brodie said.

Taly Rutenberg and her husband, Joel ben Izzy, "bought" two Torah portions — Shofetim and Noach — in honor of the portions chanted by their son, Elijah, and daughter, Michaela, at their b'nai mitzvah.

Michaela was bat mitzvahed Oct. 25 in the chapel at Mills College. With help from Jewish Milestones staff, Rutenberg made an original prayerbook for the day and the entire family chanted from the lending Torah.

"Having a Torah is what makes [an independent bar or bat mitzvah] feasible, it makes it possible," Rutenberg said. "It was our privilege to support them. Anything we can do, we'll do, because they've helped us personally."

Jewish Milestones originally planned a Torah dedication ceremony for last March. But three weeks before the event, Batz and Brodie unrolled their Torah, which had just arrived from Israel, and found that "they had sent us the wrong one — it didn't even match the pictures we had received," Brodie said.

They canceled the ceremony and spent another four months working with an Israeli broker to purchase and restore a different Torah. The Torah, written in Sephardic script, arrived in Berkeley last summer.

Those who borrow the Torah must undergo a 30-minute training to learn how to properly care for it. They also must sign a loan agreement. There is no fee for using the Torah, but a donation to Jewish Milestones is suggested.

Already, reservations for use of the Torah run through 2010.

"We joke that we already need a second one," Brodie said.

Added Batz, "As soon as the word got out, people called us from all over the community. It's such an affirmation that this was a need."

There are many rewarding things about having a community Torah scroll, Brodie says: "It is an opportunity to demystify Torah, while at the same time increasing people's awe and awareness of how special a Torah is."

At the dedication, three people stood beneath a green and blue silk chuppah to chant from the Torah in three different tropes — Ashkenazi, Moroccan and Italian. Accompanied by acoustic guitars and hand drums, attendees sang songs and chanted prayers.

To emphasize the concept that a Torah should be accessible, and not just admired from afar, Milestones staff unrolled the scroll on banquet tables 30 feet in length.

Many crowded round the tables, peering closely at the parchment, while others got up on their chairs to snap photos. Guests of all ages and denominations, sporting various head coverings or none at all, admired the scroll as Friedman explained how the parchment and ink are made.

As a female scribe, Friedman, much like Jewish Milestones, is something of a boundary-breaker, which is why Brodie and Batz wanted her to speak at the dedication ceremony.

The British-born sofer came to Judaism in her 20s, while in college studying mathematics.

She got a book from the library to teach herself how to read Hebrew, and soon became enamored with the beauty of the Hebrew alphabet. She asked a Torah scribe if he would teach her his art; he said if she were a man, certainly, but otherwise, no.

Because being a sofer is a "boys club," Friedman said, she taught herself by reading as much as she could about Torah scribing.

Today, she has completed two Torah scrolls, and has also created megillah and mezuzah scrolls.

"It's a continual miracle to me, sharing Torah," Friedman said, "because it connects all of us."

Jewish Milestones hopes its lending Torah does exactly that for Bay Area Jews.




For more information or to reserve the lending Torah, contact Jewish Milestones at (510) 559-3636 or via e-mail at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).




cover photo | stacey palevsky

cover design | cathleen maclearie