Jerusalem – In the presence of MKs, rabbis and veterans of the Soviet Union’s Red Army, a new Sefer Torah was completed in the Knesset on Tuesday and dedicated to the Knesset’s synagogue as part of efforts to commemorate Jews who fought in various armies and partisan units during the Second World War.
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The initiative to commemorate May 9, the date on which Russia marks victory over the Third Reich, in the Jewish calendar as a day of honor for Jewish fighters in the war, came from Gabriel German Zaharyaev, a Vice President of the Russian Jewish Congress who also donated the funds for the Torah itself.
Speaking at the ceremony in the Knesset auditorium, Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein said that there was no better way to commemorate Jewish fighters against the Nazis then to dedicate a Torah in their memory.
“In pogroms against Jews in the past they would always burn Torah scrolls because this was the symbol of the Jewish people,” said Edelstein.
“The fact that we are continuing [in the path] of our Torah proves our victory,” he declared.
After speeches from former chief rabbi and Holocaust survivor Yisrael Meir Lau and president of the Conference of European Rabbis Pinchas Goldschmidt, the final letters of the Torah were inked by Edelstein, Minister for Jerusalem Affairs Ze’ev Elkin, head of the opposition MK Isaac Herzog, MK Avigdor Liberman and several other MKs.
Following the completion of the Torah, it was danced down the Knesset’s hallways accompanied by raucous music along with rabbis, dignitaries and members of the audience from the event and entered into the Knesset synagogue with great fanfare.
“There is no better monument and immortalization to the hundreds of thousands of Jewish soldiers who gave up their lives in the war against the Nazis than writing a Torah scroll, the eternal book of books of the Jewish people,” said Lau of the ceremony and the initiative to commemorate Jewish fighters who died during the war.
If most of the MK’s are not keeping the Torah laws whats the point of having there a Torah?
What exactly do they plan to do with it?
Something tells me it won’t even pass it’s first reading…..
כי מציון תצא תורה ודבר ה מירושלים
Some Jews commemorate the destruction of the nazis in 1945, and the Jewish soldiers and resistance. Apparently some others celebrate 1933 because they think it proves the point of how the Zionists were somehow to blame.
AlterG – it’s clear from all of your comments that you are also not keeping too many of the Torah laws
Less negativity (among commentators) -more positivity! Why do we always have to be so critical?