A single letter of a single word lovingly inscribed on parchment Sunday gave birth to a holy scroll that will memorialize a Weston teenager who died after a Tel Aviv suicide bombing.
Daniel Wultz’s parents and older sister each rested a hand on top of a rabbi’s hand as he penned the first of the 304,000 letters of a new Torah scroll for Chabad Lubavitch of Weston. The handwritten Torah, the Jewish book of holy laws, will be completed by the first anniversary of the devoutly religious 16-year-old’s death and will be housed in the synagogue’s ark.
“His days were far too short. The Torah we are writing today in Daniel’s name will remind God that Daniel followed his rules and commandments with the utmost love and respect,” Tuly Wultz, Daniel’s father, told more than 150 people gathered at the synagogue.
Daniel and his father were eating lunch on a restaurant patio on April 17 when a suicide bomber detonated a 10-pound device laced with nails and shrapnel, killing 10 people and injuring 60 others. Daniel clung to life for four weeks in a Tel Aviv hospital before succumbing May 14 to infection and organ failure.
The beginning of the Torah project marked the end of Shloshim, the traditional Jewish mourning period.
“Of course we’ll never stop mourning Daniel for the rest of our lives,” his father said. Tuly Wultz, who suffered a fractured leg in the bombing, was walking Sunday without crutches or a cane.
Family and friends followed the Wultzes in helping write the first 55 letters on the scroll, which will be taken to Israel for a learned scribe to complete.
“[The Torah] will forever be in our ark,” said Rabbi Yisroel Spalter. “We will dance with this Torah. We will celebrate with this Torah. I see it as a Torah of Daniel. So we will dance with Daniel. We will celebrate with Daniel. ? He will be engraved in our hearts and in our building forever and forever.”
Amanda Wultz, 19, Daniel’s sister, said he was becoming more religious as he got older and that he tried to live by the Torah.
The support that has been coming in worldwide for the family has touched them as they struggle with the tragedy, she said. “It’s very heartwarming to know that people care a lot.”
Anyone interested in contributing to the Daniel Wultz Sefer Torah can learn more at www.chabadofweston.com
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