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Sumy, Ukraine

The Things You Find in Ukraine...

Helping an elederly Jew affix a mezuzah on his door. Note the box of matzah.
Helping an elederly Jew affix a mezuzah on his door. Note the box of matzah.

Our Russian-built horseless carriage has just returned us from a road trip through Belapolya, Charevka, Putyivil, Shostka, Yampol, Seredina-Buda, Kralivets and Altinivka.

Many interesting things happened, including, but not limited to, a 93 year old man putting tefillin on for the first time in 80 years, meeting a little Gorsky Jew living in a hut in a one-street shtetl, getting our documents thoroughly checked at a police station in the Russian-border town of Seredina-Buda (by no one less than the chief of police), and finding ten Jews living there too.

Near the end of our journey, we stopped off at the home of a woman in Kralivets. We spoke for a while, said a little l'chaim, and ate apples from her garden. She then told us that she had a Torah, and asked if we wanted to see it.

Now you see, whenever anyone in this country tells you that they have a Torah, they most likely mean a book with Hebrew writing in it. But we weren't rushing anywhere so we told her that we would love to see it.

This picture showing wolves attacking a deer was drawn at the height of the Holocaust.


She went into her house, and came back with a wrapped up scroll. We unwrapped it and laid it out on the table. It was a detailed sketch of a deer being attacked by wolves. In the corner was a signature and a date in 1943. We flipped it over. It was an entire section of a Torah scroll, the writing as legible as if it had just been written.

The old woman explained that a young man had found a drawing in a frame amongst the possessions of his grandmother, and had given it to her when he discovered the Jewish writing on the other side.

"Here," she told us, "take it with you."

We looked a little closer at the letters that some scribe had written long ago:

"Remember what Amalek did to you on the road, on your way out of Egypt... you must obliterate the memory of Amalek from under the heavens. Do not forget."

We wrapped up the scroll, got into the car, and went on to our next stop so that we would be able to put tefillin on with the villagers there before sundown.

The letters are as clear as if they were just writtten.

Reader Comments
Latest Comments:
Posted: Sep 4, 2009
It occured to me as I read the message..
It occured to me as I read the message..
It sounded to my ears as Amalek means "the ego" so I read it again with "the ego" and to me and for the first time it made sense . To me the ego is the root for such hate violence chaos and curses that we experiecne in this world for far too long.
Does it sound that way to you also?
Posted By Anonymous, Florida

Posted: Aug 28, 2009
G-d bless you
G-d bless you for your holy work, often done in great lhardship.
Posted By Miriam Adahan, Jerusalem, Israel

Posted: Aug 26, 2009
I suspect that a torah was divided into sections for safe keeping. to hide it from the Nazis it was used on the reverse side to make a picture of wolves attacking a deer. The wolves were symbolic for the SS, the deer of our people.
Posted By Marcia Meyerstein, chatsworth, CA

Posted: Aug 25, 2009
Roving Rabbis
If not for your valuable work, who would find these treasures....
Posted By Anonymous, Arad, Israel

Posted: Aug 19, 2009
Waow
I can just say that I'm very impressed about the courage you guys have to think of others before yourselves, because Ukraine is not the most welcoming country in Europe, without considering the anti-semitism there.
I can just wish you to go from strength to strength in the service of G-d, and giving naches to the Rebbe!
Posted By A former ukrainian tourist


 



By Dovid Margolin

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