The Irish Torah
Toledot 5776 / 15 November 2015
This d’var was delivered on November 14, 2015, by congregant Ira Siegal during Colin Flanagan’s Bar Mitzvah.
To Colin Flanagan’s family, it may seem like the planets and moons are in alignment.
Several congregants have marked double-digit anniversaries of their B’nai Mitzvot. I cannot think of another who marked the anniversary in the exact spot where it took place. Not even Elkan, my brother, did this.
50 Years ago, at BZBI, B’nai Mitzvot were not asked to prepare a D’var Torah.
At the entrance, you will find the photo album of my event.
The second Aliyah starts with a short sentence:
VaYeshev Yitzchak B’grar… And Isaac, dwelled in Gerar. With his wife Rebeka, he tells the people and King Abimelek that she is his sister.
This is déjà vu all over again! Two weeks ago in Parshat Va’Yera, Abraham also dwelt in Gerar with a similar story about Sarah.
Although this is a place, the Hebrew root word is Ger, which means a stranger or a “resident alien”. You can also think of a “state of mind”. Our tradition teaches, as we were once strangers in Egypt, we must always be kind to the stranger.
Isaac dwelt in a strange land.
This is the history of this Sefer Torah and history of one of our merged congregation’s presidents.
Thanks to my NY niece and nephew, Eva and Eric Stern:
Reading from this particular Torah scroll today symbolizes the continuity of Jewish life passed down from the Schreider–Siegal family.
This Torah belonged to my great grandfather, Moshe Schreider, who was a religious learned man, a mohel, and a shochet (a butcher) – in a small town called Oshmania (Poland or Lithuainia border, depending on the time period). This town was near Vilna. Moshe Schreider was a widower who left Vilna a few years after his youngest son Isaac was born in 1885 for the destination of — Dublin, Ireland! Moshe’s brother, Matisyahu, was the head of Jewish education in Dublin. Young Isaac was educated in the Dublin public schools.
His tenor voice allowed him to be a Ba’al T’Fillah and an admired singer in the Yiddish Opera production of Shulamit.
There was a very small Jewish population of several hundred in Ireland for hundreds of years from German migration and Marranos fleeing Spain after 1492.
In 1891, after a larger migration from Lithuania, the Jewish population reached 1,500 and doubled to 3,000 in 1901.
70% lived in Dublin. The Jewish population was only .04%–four-hundredths of a percent–in 1891.
Isaac dwelt in a strange land!
In 1907, at 22, Isaac came to Philadelphia carrying this Torah.
I have it on good authority, from our renowned, retired, senior conservator at the Penn Museum, and gabbai, Virginia Greene, that this sefer Torah was written in Russia approximately 1870.
Colin, you will be reading from a Torah that is 145 years old!
It is a very heavy Torah. It’s Russian! You have to be very strong to lift and to carry it. Or, perhaps, “Juiced-up!”
My grandfather Isaac, after coming to Philadelphia, attended services at the Neziner Congregation on South 2nd Street in Queen Village. When he was a father to two teen-age girls, my mother Martha, and older sister Jean, he became the President of Neziner from 1927 to 1947, when he passed away at age 62 – just one month after the end of all of the Jewish holidays. I just turned 63, two weeks ago!
I say that not with a sense of defiance, but with gratitude, considering the one-week hospitalization for an infection that I experienced last February. According to Dr. Mort Civan, this infection used to kill patients!
There is a bronze plaque downstairs in the Neziner Hebrew School that marks his “20 years of Faithful and Devoted service as President”. In an immigrant community during the Great Depression, it was unique for a synagogue leader to have the language skills of Polish, Yiddish, and English, with an Irish brogue!
I was joking before, about the planets in alignment. But in a sense it is. Isaac’s yahrtzeit – the anniversary of his death, was observed last Shabbat.
Following the merger of Neziner with Beth Zion-Beth Israel in 1984 and the acquisition of their Torah Scrolls, my parents arranged to repair this Torah and rededicate it with this mantle cover and, since then, four of Isaac’s great grandchildren have read from this Sefer Torah on the occasions of their B’nai Mitzvot. 50 years ago, his grandchildren like Elkan and I, did not have that opportunity. Today, I am about to do just that!
In our congregation we have Selma Forstater, whose father grew up in Belfast. In a parallel story after coming to Philadelphia, he helped found Sha’aree Shamayim and later served as its president. Bella Schaeffer’s parents both lived in Dublin.
There is also Irene McHenry who is in the Mussar program who traces her family’s Jewish history in Ireland back several generations in Belfast. They came to the U.S. in the 1700s.
In the cities of Ireland, Jews, who migrated from Eastern-Europe, were able to live in relative peace. Some of us are grateful for this fact that our families had such a place to call home, a land where they were strangers, but treated well, before their journeys to Philadelphia.
So Colin, for your benefit today, we can dub this Torah, the Irish Torah!
Shabbat Shalom!
