The Tabor Torah
In the 1940s, Nazi leaders perversely acted to create a museum — an exhibit of "relics of the extinct Jewish race" — that would verify the very communities they sought to exterminate. They looted the synagogues of Eastern Europe, sending the precious legacy of our people to Prague, Czechoslovakia. When Prague was liberated in 1945, three warehouses were found, filled floor-to-ceiling with the plunder of hundreds of Jewish communities throughout Bohemia and Moravia. Among the vast treasures of sacred objects were 1,564 Torah scrolls.
When the war ended, there were inadequate resources to protect the scrolls and they were seemingly destined to decay. However, in 1964, through the benevolence of a congregant, the scrolls were placed in railroad cars and shipped to the Westminister Synagogue in London. There, the Memorial Scrolls Committee was formed to catalogue the Torahs, restore them, and place them on loan to congregations and other Jewish organizations throughout the world.
One such Torah, #248, was placed on loan to Temple Israel — a Torah that had been stolen from the Ark of the Reform synagogue of Tabor in Bohemia.
Tabor is a small community known for its fortress that, at one time, gave protection to Jan Huss and his followers. The Hussites were a Catholic sect who rebelled against the Church nearly a century before the Lutheran Reformation of 1517. Although many Hussites became Lutherans, the Catholic Hussites retained their autonomy until 1620 when Roman Catholicism was again imposed.
Jews began living among the Hussites of Tabor in the early 1600s. The Jewish cemetery was established in 1634 and a significant synagogue was built in the late 1700s near the town center. In 1942, the Jews of Tabor were deported to Terezin and eventually re-deported to Auschwitz and other death camps. Few survived and today, there are no Jews living in Tabor. The cemetery was plowed under by the Nazis and is used today as a park. The synagogue was torn down by the Communists and is used today as a parking lot.
In 2000, Temple Israel and the Basilica of St. Mary continued their remarkable history of interfaith relationship. Nearly 50 members of the congregations, led by Rabbi Joseph Edelheit and Father Michael O’Connell, traveled to Tabor. There, a special service was created and, for the first time since 1942, in the very parking lot where the synagogue once stood, Torah was blessed and read (from a copy of the original Tabor Torah). The Torah portion for that week was from Kedoshim-Leviticus 18 & 19 and teaches us:
"You shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am Adonai."
A special document was created to include the Torah portion and the signatures of every one present. One copy was left in the Jewish museum in Prague, one given to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, one kept for the Basilica’s archives, and one kept for the Temple's archives.
Later that year, the Temple and the Basilica became the first synagogue and church to jointly memorialize a Judenrein (Jew-free) community, Tabor, at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The Jewish community of Tabor lives on as our children chant from the Tabor Torah scroll when then become B’nai Mitzvah, and through our dedication at the Museum.
This page was last updated on September 19, 2001