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Holocaust stories on sacred scroll

Synagogue will use in service

By: Brenda Suderman

Posted: 04/23/2011 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

From left, scribe Irma Penn, Rabbi Larry Pinsker and Estelle (Tzivie) Meyers, with scroll Meyers commissioned.

To honour the memories of the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust, a local synagogue has preserved some of their stories on a one-of-a-kind, hand-lettered scroll.

Written in both Hebrew and English by Winnipeg scribe Irma Penn, the scroll transforms a historical event into a sacred object that can help Jews remember the past, explains the associate rabbi of Shaarey Zedek Synagogue.

"It is a ritualization of the memory of the Holocaust," said Rabbi Larry Pinsker of the text of the Holocaust scroll, written by Hebrew University professor Avigdor Shinan and published in booklet form in 2003.

"The synagogue has been so impressed with the power of the text -- it's been able to convey the horror and the passion involved."

Containing a liturgy, prayers and stories, the scroll will be used for the first time at the synagogue's fourth annual Holocaust service, 7 p.m. Sunday, May 1.

Holocaust Memorial Day is celebrated a week after the seventh day of Passover, a date the Israeli government selected 60 years ago.

More than a dozen religious and community leaders, including Mayor Sam Katz and Lt.-Gov. Philip Lee, will take turns reading from the scroll at the public service.

The Winnipeg scroll is thought to be the only one in the world with the text written in both Hebrew and English, said Estelle (Tzivie) Meyers, who commissioned it in honour of her late husband, provincial court judge Ron Meyers, who died last year.

Meyers lost many family members in the Holocaust, and was inspired to commission the scroll as a permanent memorial for them as well as her husband, who was an avid Holocaust historian.

"When you read the stories, you understand this is something we all share," she said of the contents of the scroll.

The Holocaust Scroll contains the first-person accounts of a journalist visiting wartime ghettos, a diary fragment by a young imprisoned woman named Gertrude, and the story of Yaakov-David Ben Yoel-Tzvi Halevi, who describes his experiences in escaping death three times during the war.

Significantly smaller than a Torah scroll, which contains the first five books of the Old Testament, the new Holocaust Scroll consists of five parchments stitched together and mounted on two rollers. The Hebrew text is written in the special script reserved for the Torah and other sacred texts, Penn pointed out, with the parallel English translation written in a simple cursive font.

Not only is the Hebrew text written the same way as sacred scripture, the letters within it also contain visual images, such as a broken rainbow, smaller or incomplete letters, and a teardrop to cue the readers about the content of the stories in the scroll, said Penn.

"This shows the sadness of the scribe of having to write such an awful story," explained the scribe, the only Canadian to participate in Women's Torah Project for a synagogue in Seattle, Wash.

"It was hard (to scribe the scroll), because I know the story of the Holocaust and it's gruesome."

Along with telling a painful story, the transformation of a mass-produced book into a handwritten scroll creates a bridge between the secular and the sacred, the synagogue's ritual director said.

"In the first three years (of the Holocaust service), the words were powerful, but the visuals are stronger," Bill Weissmann said of the importance of having the words on a scroll instead of in a book.

Pairing Ron Meyers' passion for books, history and justice to a ritual object to be used annually by the synagogue where he was a member is a good fit for all involved.

"One of the cornerstones of Judaism is justice," Weissmann said. "It became important to me that this would honour someone so connected with justice."

And remembering the six million in a ritual way at the synagogue is also about justice, Rabbi Pinsker said.

brenda@suderman.com

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition April 23, 2011 B4

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