Hundreds of people, including visiting Jewish leaders from the United States and Israel, filled the streets of Krakow, Poland, last month to dedicate a Torah scroll at the historic Rema Synagogue in memory of Chabad-Lubavitch Rabbi Yossie Raichik.

The late director of Chabad’s Children of Chernobyl had made it one of his goals to find a Torah for the 16th-centry shul, which is named after Raichik’s ancestor, Rabbi Moses Isserles, a sage whose glosses appear embedded in the text of the Code of Jewish Law.

“This is completing a circle,” said the rabbi’s widow, Dina Raichik. “It was something he wanted, something he started and didn’t finish.”


The ceremonies last month began at the historic Izaak Synagogue, which was filled with guests. After filling in the new Torah’s last letters, a procession carried the holy scroll through Krakow’s streets and on to the Rema Synagogue, 10 minutes away.


Aided by a ritual scribe, a participant in the celebration fills one of the scroll’s last letters. Acquaintances of Raichik’s in Argentina paid for the new Torah.


The Torah procession wound its way through Krakow’s historic Jewish quarter.


Hundreds of people filled the streets.


The Torah is lifted for all to see.


Secure in its holy ark, the new scroll is the Rema Synagogue’s only kosher Torah.