One Community, Three Torahs

Three Chabad centers,three Torah dedications, three weeks in May. It’s a joyous trilogy for the Jewish community of Boca Raton, Florida.

The city of Boca Raton boasts three Chabad centers and, in what the rabbis are calling a ‘Providential’ coincidence, all three will dedicate new Torah scrolls during the month of May.

“Jews don’t believe in happenstance,” says Rabbi Ruvi New of Chabad of East Boca. “We believe that everything happens by Divine Providence and if all three Chabad centers here are dedicating new Torahs, it is because Jews are returning to their roots in record numbers, more synagogues are being opened and many more Torahs are needed.”

The Torah scroll, the repository of Jewish belief, history and scholarship, triggers powerful emotions in the heart of a Jew. That was evident yesterday at Chabad of East Boca as a large group of men, women and children welcomed a newly re-dedicated Holocaust Torah with a celebration that began at the Boca Raton Museum of Art and continued the few short blocks to the synagogue. The emotional mood of the crowd was palpable. Smiles and tears intermingled as the Torah was reverentially escorted under a chupah with live music and dancing.

On May 9th, hundreds of people turned out to welcome a new Torah to the Jeff Weltman Chabad Synagogue in West Boca, which was dedicated by community member Bill Tanenbaum in memory of his late wife Reina.

Completing the Torah trilogy, Chabad of Central Boca will host a celebration on May 30th, inaugurating a community-wide new Torah project. Rabbi Moshe Klein, one of the world’s premier Torah scribes will inscribe the first letters of the new Torah scroll using the ancient method of quill and ink. Community members will have the opportunity to participate in the mitzvah by purchasing their own letters in the scroll.