The latest idea to replace the “old rumour”, according the rabbi, is that some of the initial collecting of Torah scrolls came from Jews hoping to preserve the

The latest idea to replace the “old rumour”, according the rabbi, is that some of the initial collecting of Torah scrolls came from Jews hoping to preserve the scrolls from their synagogues that were vandalised or destroyed by the nazis. But after a collection of Jewish artefacts and treasures was started (which includes things like silver scroll crowns and plates and Yad pointers), the nazis themselves became interested in gathering the relics hoping to extract precious metals. So much of the silver is gone today, but amazingly the collection of scrolls themselves remained relatively intact. My synagogue has one of the scrolls, very badly damaged, which the rabbi showed us this morning. There is something very powerful about seeing and feeling a religious artifact hundreds of years old, originally from a Czech Jewish community now destroyed and practically forgotten. Yet this Torah lives on a living and breathing Jewish community today, where some of the Bar and Bat Mitzvah students actually read from it.