By Marcia Montgomery
Associate Editor
As the old saying goes, “You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.” However, it’s possible to make a Torah ark out of an old gun cabinet.
Just ask Rabbi Neal Schuster, senior Jewish educator for Hillel at the University of Kansas. KU Hillel recently acquired a Torah scroll from the Conservative Temple B’nai Sholem in St. Joseph, Missouri, and it requires an aron ha-Kodesh (holy ark) to house it. So Rabbi Schuster, designed and is assembling an ark from a gun cabinet he purchased at an auction in Lawrence for $3. He hopes to have it completed in time for High Holy Days.
“It’s a neat opportunity; it’s got that ‘swords into plowshares’ aspect to it,” said Rabbi Schuster in an interview. “It’s beautiful to take something that was once meant for that purpose and use the wood to create something sacred.”
KU Hillel had never had a Torah scroll until the board of B’nai Sholem made the decision to gift one to them, after first considering a permanent loan. So it is now solely KU Hillel’s property. B’nai Sholem sold its building a couple of years ago due to the dwindling number of congregants and its six Torahs have been in storage ever since.
Bob Ott, president of B’nai Sholem, told The Chronicle that the son of one of the synagogue’s vice presidents, Steven Rosenack, was the president of KU Hillel. Rosenack was instrumental in connecting B’nai Sholem to Hillel regarding the Torah.
“There was an indication that they had a need, so we looked at it as an opportunity to do something positive with the Torah rather than just monetize it, to actually put it in a learning environment where it could be used the way it’s supposed to be used,” Ott said. “I think one of the things that swung us toward the charitable giving of it is that you’re less likely to find a student organization capable of affording to buy a Torah. So that’s kind of the direction we wanted to go at this point.”
Rabbi Schuster said not all Hillels have Torah scrolls. Larger Hillels that function as an on-campus synagogue will usually have one, but it is not universal. KU Hillel is medium size, having grown significantly over the last 10 to 15 years. So what does it mean for KU Hillel to have a Torah?
Rabbi Schuster said it’s significant and means a number of things. If they want to have Shabbat morning services, they can now. They will also be able to read from the Torah during certain services.
“The one time of year when we absolutely wanted to have a scroll was for Kol Nidre and so for the last 10 years Kehilath Israel Synagogue has been gracious and generous in lending us a Torah scroll for Kol Nidre,” he said. “That’s been wonderful, but it also means you have to make arrangements, etc. When you borrow one, there’s the concern of the liability. Now we have a scroll and we don’t have to worry about that.
“There’s also an ‘open the doors of new possibilities’ aspect. It’s a great teaching and learning opportunity — what does it mean to have a scroll, to care for a scroll, to use a scroll.”
Due to COVID-19, it is still uncertain what gatherings will look like when school starts, but Rabbi
Schuster said the first time KU Hillel uses the Torah, they will definitely do something very special to celebrate.
Ott explained one of the concerns of both B’nai Sholem and KU Hillel was the quality of the Torah. “We gave them a choice of two. One was rather small in comparison to the others that are more standard size and that’s the one they actually took.”
According to Rabbi Schuster, “My cursory examination revealed it to be in reasonably good condition, with very light wear for its age, which I don’t know with certainty, but given the age of the community, a rough estimate would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 years, give or take.”
No one knows exactly how old the Torah is. B’nai Sholem was founded in 1960 as the result of a merger between two much older synagogues: Shaare Sholem and B’nai Yaakov. Ott said all the Torahs from B’nai Sholem came from the original congregations.
Rabbi Schuster said the scroll was mostly used for Rosh Hashanah, and that section has some light fading, but no cracked or missing ink. The atzei chayim (plural of eitz chayim — the poles of the scroll) need a bit of repair to stabilize them, but that should be a relatively easy task.
The treasurer of B’nai Sholem, Kathy Kranitz Sadoun, in whose home this particular Torah was stored in an environmentally controlled room, surmises that perhaps the smaller Torah was originally purchased to accommodate the older men who during High Holidays held the Torahs, making it easier for them to carry.
Kranitz Sadoun said she thinks it’s wonderful that KU Hillel is the beneficiary of the Torah. “It’s a wonderful thing that Hillel House has got a tool that it did not have to instruct people who want to be instructed in the reading of Torah and to have a Torah to use at services.”
B’nai Sholem is not looking to sell or donate any of its other scrolls at this time. Up until March, when the US began a lockdown because of COVID-19, B’nai Sholem led services at the only other synagogue in the city, the Reform Temple Adath Joseph, the first two weeks of the month using Conservative prayer books and the remaining weeks in the Reform style, using their books. This worked out well for the fewer than 100 Jews left in the Jewish community of St. Joseph.
Now, Adath Joseph’s Rabbi Linda Steigman holds a virtual service in conjunction with her daughter’s congregation in Louisiana every other week. Ott said some of B’nai Sholem’s members join that as well.
“The St. Joe community used to be a thriving Jewish community and I think they’ve really been thoughtful about how they’ve dealt with that change,” said Rabbi Schuster.
According to the Directory of Jewish Local Organizations in the United States, there were 3,300 Jews living in St. Joseph in 1919.
“It was incredibly generous, really gracious of (B’nai Sholem) to give us this Torah and allow it to keep being used, to make an existing community more alive and vibrant rather than just sitting in storage, like some old Torah scrolls are,” the rabbi continued. “We are grateful to the community and excited to have it.”