The usual questions Christians ask Jewish folks arose: What did the holiday mean, How was it celebrated, etc. The rabbi proceeded to explain the Shabbat service, talk about modern Judaism,what it means to be a jew, and he described the various furniture including the Aron Ha Kodesh, or ark. As he opened the ark, he carefully took out an older looking scroll. He explained the care of the scroll, how reform, orthodox, and conservative Jews view the care of the scroll, the use of the yad, and so on. He translated a little of the passage and described its use in Shabbat services.

He went on to explain, that this scroll was from the Holocaust, or Shoah. It was from a small town called Kromeriz, in what is now Czechoslovakia. As the Nazis marched into the town, the holy things of the synagogue were desecrated, torah scrolls thrown on the floor and the Jews of the town deported or killed in bloody deaths.

I was riveted on the sheepskin scroll. For a moment in time, it was as if we were in that European synagogue, and the reality of the shoah pierced my heart. I thought, "Who held this last?" "What became of those hands and the last ones that took their prayer shawls; the last Shema. Where were they? Had some survived?

I noticed white hand-painted letters on the scroll: 7303A. I asked the Rabbi, why those numbers were there. I felt at first, anger, thinking it was a nazi desecration. It meant more.

After the Nazi pillaged and killed they collected holy artifacts of the deported Jews. These artifacts were sent to Prague. In their insanity of Pride, the Nazis gathered together Jewish scholars, before killing them, and had them catalog myriads of torahs, shawls and other items, for preservation in what was to become "The Museum of the Extinct Jewish Race". The Museum would be opened after Europe was "Judenrein" or "Jew-free". The numbers were a catalog number.

The deaths haunt history and will not let go. Europe almost became free of the nation God chose as beloved. The hands that held the scroll, the hearts that listened last to Torah, the scholar's hands that painted on the numbers, are gone, with barely a whisper of remembrance.

The Torah did not die. It found its way via scholars in Westminister England, to a small Aron Ha Kodesh at the Congregation Mizpah, in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Over fifty years and millions of lives are passed, but new hands, Jewish hands, hold that same Torah Scroll. With love.

The next day, the Rabbi went on to explain, would be a bat Mitvah, for a young girl named Rachel. She read her Hebrew passages excellently. She would be handed the scroll, and walk quietly around the congregation, each person applying a gentle kiss to the beloved Word that would not die, by a people that G-d had promised, would not die. From Rachel to Rachel, the hope is ever new.

A Jewish child, alive, and in a land far away from horror walked around the synagogue, with the song that lasts forever: Shema, Y'israel, Adonai, Elohenu, Adonai Echad. His promises are true. He doeth only wondrous things. I wrote a song that evening about the events. My song was small against that eternal living song. Against the Word that gives life and will not die. There is a timeless synagogue where chaim and praise are alive. The only shamayim in this world, is of the heart. There is a greater shamayim still. Oh, and the museum in Prague? It is now the JEWISH museum of Prague, a memorial and not a mocking to the ones who died, a home of living scholars. The hearts of stone could not destroy what God had wrought, and a young one, thousands of miles away, was living testimony.

"Baruch ata Adonai, Elohim, Elohenu, Elohe Y'israel, Oseh niflaote, l'vado." elizabethbest(c)1998