October 22, 2024

As Jews around the world observe Simchat Torah and celebrate another completion of the Torah reading cycle, the 85-year journey of “the Survivor Torah” from Poland is still being written.

The Survivor Torah story begins in 1939 in the tiny northeastern Polish village of Filipów. At the time, the village’s Jews were being rounded up by the Nazis to be deported to Treblinka extermination camp. In a last-minute effort to save the community’s Torah, the town’s rabbi handed the Torah to his non-Jewish neighbor, Tomasz Wróblewski, a shepherd. The rabbi’s directions were simple: Hide this Torah until his return or give it to another Jew who would know what to do with it. The rabbi, along with most of the Jewish population of Filipów, was murdered in Treblinka.

The Wróblewski family kept the Torah hidden under their couch for 75 years. They didn’t know what it was, let alone its sacredness. So over the years, parts of the Torah were sliced away by the family and used for ordinary things like making a handbag and insoles for shoes, and then back under the couch it went. 

But in 2015, the Torah would emerge from hiding because of Jonny Daniels, the British-Israeli founder of the nonprofit From the Depths. Daniels connected with the Torah when volunteers with his organization went to Filipów as part of their mission to find lost Jewish cemeteries in Eastern Europe. The student volunteers from University of Warsaw had been going door-to-door asking villagers about any remnants of Jewish gravestones they may know of. When they knocked on the door of the Wróblewski home, an elderly couple brought them in, thinking that they were the Jews he’d been awaiting for 76 years. The students, however, weren’t Jewish, and the Wróblewskis said they could only tell their secret to a Jew. So the students returned with Daniels.

“The shepherd lifted up the sofa, and lying on the floor was half of the Torah, It was a shocking sight,” Daniels told The Journal. Rather than bury the damaged Torah, as Jewish law dictates, Daniels saw a much bigger mission for it. “This Torah really is the last survivor from this village. All the Jews from Filipów were taken to Treblinka and killed, but this Torah survived. Now, our opportunity was to bring it back to life.” 

Thus began the Survivor Torah Project, Daniels’ initiative to restore the Torah by having Holocaust survivors from around the world fill in the missing letters. The Torah was ripped from the end of Leviticus onward, so there’s quite a bit to go — over 100,000 letters remain to be written.

“This Torah is being refilled by the very people who survived,” Daniels said. 

To keep the letters looking uniform, Daniels has a Torah Sofer (scribe) outline each of the letters. The process of filling in the letters can take several forms. Most often, the survivor is holding Daniels’ arm as he puts the letters onto the parchment. 

“They’re holding onto me, which also allows women to be involved in as well, and to have this as a Torah that is accepted by everybody,” Daniels said. Daniels has done the process with Orthodox Jewish woman who won’t hold onto his arm, but may hold the end of the feather quill or sit next to Daniels and he writes the letter on their behalf.

“It’s important for me that in the end, this Torah could go into a Hasidic synagogue, into a Reform synagogue — this is a Torah for the entire Jewish people,” Daniels said. Once it is complete, the plan is to have the Survivor Torah be permanently stored at the synagogue inside Beit HaNassi, the residence of the President of Israel in Jerusalem.

Daniels said that many survivors have asked to write multiple letters in the Torah to honor the family members they lost during the Holocaust. He’ll sit with survivors who want to write a letter for each sibling they lost, or for their children or grandchildren.

Since its rediscovery, the Survivor Torah has traveled with him to several countries, including Sweden, Denmark, Mexico, Germany and Poland. Just recently, Daniels drove to a remote town in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania to meet with a Holocaust survivor who lives there alone. In fact, finding Holocaust survivors living their lives in solitude is all-too-common. Daniels said how, during a visit to Los Angeles in 2023, he sat with a Holocaust survivor for three-and-a-half hours at her home in Beverly Hills. 

“She was completely alone, not willing to leave her house,” Daniels said. “But when I brought the Torah to her, it was like she was reconnecting with her past, with her family, with her faith.” So far, over 600 Holocaust survivors from around the world have participated in the restoration of the Torah. This past year, the Torah crossed the equator for the first time, traveling to Brazil. Daniels met survivors in São Paulo, South America’s second-most Jewish city.

“When we brought the Torah to Brazil, the reaction from the survivors was overwhelming,” Daniels said. “Many of them had never heard of the project before, and they were so touched to be part of something that connects them directly to their own history and to Jews around the world.” It’s always in Daniels’ possession, stowed in a thick, locked briefcase wherever he goes. As an Israel Defense Forces veteran, Daniels is confident in being its protectorate. And it’s never, ever checked baggage on an airplane.

Since the attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, Daniels has also become one of the go-to Israel information influencers on social media today. But every few days, his posts about the news of the day are interspersed with photos and videos of additions to the Survivor Torah. It’s not lost on him for a moment that the largest single-day murder of Jews since the Holocaust took place last year on Simchat Torah, what was supposed to be one of the most joyous days on the Jewish calendar. This year, the Survivor Torah will be spending Simchat Torah in Los Angeles, where Daniels hopes to have even more Holocaust survivors bring it another letter closer to completion. 

It’s often an occasion where survivors and their families make an entire event out of the moment — even when the arrangements are made at the last minute. “Suddenly the grandkids are wearing the suits and the great-grandkids, these little beautiful Jewish children over there in their best clothes — they understand the beauty and significance of this for their family member,” Daniels said. “And the survivors get a level of closure, conversation and connection. It gives them a level of comfort in what has been a very difficult year for Holocaust survivors who are re-seeing images of Jew hatred that they haven’t seen since the 1930s.”

To arrange a time to have a Holocaust survivor contribute to the Survivor Torah, contact Jonny Daniels on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jonnydaniels

In an exclusive interview, Columbia University Professor Shai Davidai told The Journal that the university temporarily barring him from campus is a “personal insult” and that “there’s a bigger of how solve this, how do we move forward, not about myself necessarily but everything that’s happening on campus.”

A university spokesperson told The Journal, “Columbia has consistently and continually respected Assistant Professor Davidai’s right to free speech and to express his views.  His freedom of speech has not been limited and is not being limited now.  Columbia, however, does not tolerate threats of intimidation, harassment or other threatening behavior by its employees.  Because Assistant Professor Davidai repeatedly harassed and intimidated University employees in violation of University policy, we have temporarily limited his access to campus while he undertakes appropriate training on our policies governing the behavior of our employees.” According to a university official, Davidai’s suspension is the result of him harassing university employees on Oct. 7, but did not elaborate further. The university official added that Davidai is not suspended, but restricted from campus and that his compensation or status as a faculty member is not affected.

Davidai has maintained that he did not harass or threaten anyone and that the university is retaliating against him for posting videos to social media confronting university officials for not taking action against an anti-Israel protest on campus. The posts include videos where Davidai confronts University Chief Operating Officer Cas Holloway for being “indifferent” to an anti-Israel walkout occurring on Oct. 7. Davidai called the action “unsanctioned’ and violated time, place and manner restrictions. Other videos show Davidai confronting Assistant Director of Public Safety Bobby Lau, telling Lau to his face that he’s “useless.” Davidai claimed in the video that he was being elbowed and kicked in the shin by anti-Israel protesters as Lau stared on.

Davidai explained that “pro-Hamas organizations and professors” were protesting a memorial service held by Jewish students on Oct. 7. “They held signs saying ‘no peace,’ ‘resistance by all means necessary’ but also signs saying ‘long live the Al-Aqsa Flood’ which is the Hamas name that was given to the October massacre,” Davidai said of the anti-Israel protesters. “They were given their space to protest our memorial service, and even though I find that heinous … it’s free speech, and they’re allowed to do that, and I didn’t interact, I didn’t do anything about that.” But later on, the protesters left their designated protest space and began marching on campus “basically saying all of this is ours, we’re allowed to be everywhere, we’re allowed to terrorize Jewish students,” Davidai said. “At that point, I decided that I’m not going to cede my ground. I did not enter their protest — there were some false claims about that — I stood in a path on campus where they were marching, and they came and enclosed all around me.” It was at that point that Davidai says he confronted Holloway and Lau.

Regarding the video where Davidai tells Lau that he was elbowed and kicked by the anti-Israel protesters, the Columbia professor said, “I’m not a big man, but I can take a punch or two, so I’m okay with that. But they were walking around me, thinking no one sees it, they were kicking me in the shins, they were elbowing me, and Bobby Lau just does nothing.” 

To Davidai, the irony is that “he says that by me standing there, I was the one causing the problem.  And yet when I wasn’t the one standing but I was the one walking after Cas Holloway … I was also the one causing the trouble. So for them, it’s just my mere existence on campus which is a problem.”

In one of the videos where Davidai is confronting Holloway while walking alongside him, Davidai points out that an Israeli student is crying over the anti-Israel march. The student is not shown in the video which Davidai said was because he “didn’t want to expose the student.” He explained that the student came to the university this year to study neuroscience and she was “shocked” at the march. “Imagine coming from a country who experienced the worst massacre of its history, coming to the U.S., to her dream school, and on the first anniversary of that massacre, being confronted with a protest in celebration of that massacre,” Davidai said. “And the fact that Cas Holloway just, with that dead look in his eyes, basically tells her there’s nothing we can do, file a complaint. I’m still dumbfounded when I think about that, I still don’t understand how it is that this is our reality.”

His fight, he said, is not against the students and faculty who support Hamas. Instead, his fight is “against the administration that allows this to happen. So I wanted to expose the world to who are these administrators.”

His fight, he said, is not against the students and faculty who support Hamas. Instead, his fight is “against the administration that allows this to happen. So I wanted to expose the world to who are these administrators.”

Davidai claimed that the administrators didn’t like being exposed, and thus the university retaliated by temporary banning him from campus; he further alleged that his lawyers were notified that he might be banned from campus later that evening on Oct. 7, which Davidai said shows that the university’s top priority was “getting rid of me.”

“They didn’t tell me who I harassed … they never told me what exactly I did that was harassment. The university is again being the jury and the executioner,” Davidai said. “There’s no due process. They wouldn’t allow me to appeal, they wouldn’t allow me to state my own argument.”

The professor pointed out that his activism has been “public” and that people can watch the videos for themselves to see if his actions amounted to harassment. He also maintained that the university “is using very different standards” as the university is taking action against him but not against professors who are “openly calling for the destruction of Israel, openly glorifying a massacre against Jews. That doesn’t count as harassment. So clearly Columbia has a huge double standard problem.” 

On social media, Davidai has also accused the university of engaging in a double standard for not taking action against anti-Israel students who verbally confronted then-Columbia President Minouche Shafik in May.

But for Davidai what is “most painful” about being barred from campus is that he can’t be there for the Jewish students and he hopes “they have other people coming there and supporting them. I’m not sure that there are.” He elaborated that Jewish students have a “bifurcated experience” on campus as some simply avoid any parts of campus where a pro-Hamas protest is taking place, while others “stand up to the hate, and some of them are just standing there shocked. They don’t know what to do. I think most of their shock is not from the hate, it’s from the administrators — their tuition money is paying for those administrators’ salaries, and not only do they not do anything, they’re actually protecting the Hamas supporters.”

According to a university official, their expectation is that Davidai will complete a workplace training program and return to campus once he does so. Davidai had told The Columbia Daily Spectator that he would only engage in the program if Holloway did so as well. Davidai told The Journal that he’s “in a bit of a pickle” and doesn’t know what to do. 

“On the one hand, I truly believe that if you have done nothing wrong, you should not be punished,” he said. “Call me naïve, call me stupid, but that is the rule of democracy. In totalitarian regimes, you can get punished unrelated to if you did something wrong. In democracies, you’re supposed to only get punished if you did something wrong, and only after you had a chance to actually state your case … that’s not what happens at Columbia. So there’s a part of me that says no, I need to fight this.” On the other hand, “Columbia doesn’t want me on campus. They don’t want me documenting everything. They are happy to have pro-Hamas protests keep going on campus, and as long as people like Shai Davidai aren’t on campus and aren’t documenting it, the world won’t know.” Therefore, Davidai acknowledged he’s “still torn” on whether or not he should do the training.

“Columbia doesn’t want me on campus. They don’t want me documenting everything. But they are happy to have pro-Hamas protests keep going on campus.”

According to a university official, Davidai is not teaching this semester; Davidai explained that he is conducting research rather than teaching, but “the suspension does mean that I can’t go into my office, that I can’t use the printer and all this stuff at the university, but also more importantly, I cannot go to faculty meetings, I cannot go to research seminars, I can’t go to different research talks, everything that faculty life is all about, I’ve been completely barred from it.” 

Davidai said that a lawsuit against Columbia is not out of the question, as his lawyers are already suing the university over campus antisemitism, but his preference is not to sue the university and spend time in a courtroom. “But if Columbia refuses to change course, if Columbia refuses to deal with its problem with antisemitism and its support for terrorism, then we’ll use any legal way possible to force them to do so, if it’s the court of law, if it’s the court of public opinion, if it’s political pressure,” he said. “Clearly Columbia doesn’t want to fix itself, they’ve become too big to fail, and our goal is to not let go.”

The Columbia professor also criticized mainstream media coverage, noting that  The New York Times is “painting me as the bad guy … I think in many ways it’s way more damaging, because the suspension will at some point be over, but the damage the media does by downplaying, by minimizing, by telling half-truths, by omitting important information, just to push a specific narrative about peaceful protests — which they are not peaceful — is something that will stay with us for many years, and I worry about that.”

Davidai specifically pointed to how the article portrayed him as “going against pro-Palestinian protests, even while a week before, The New York Times was forced to admit that these students are not pro-Palestinian, they’re openly supporting Hamas. We have to remember: Last week this organization at Columbia said that they stand with armed resistance and violence is the only path forward, and The New York Times insists on these peaceful protests ‘pro-Palestine,’ which they are not.” He also criticized the Times for calling him “a polarizing presence on campus since Oct. 7, 2023”— to which Davidai said that “they are the one creating me as a polarizing figure” — and stating that Davidai “falsely” referred to retiring Professor Rashid Khalidi as a “spokesperson for Hamas.”

“I never claimed that,” Davidai said. “All I said was, when I saw that he was retiring, that he could go now and be a spokesperson for Hamas, clearly a tongue-in-cheek comment about his support for terrorism, and yet The New York Times smears me as someone who is spreading lies about this person, which I haven’t and I won’t.”

He said The Times article states that he “declined an interview request.” But Davidai insisted that he “didn’t decline an interview. They asked for my comment, and my comment was: I will not talk with The New York Times so long as Sharon Otterman, who’s been covering the beat of Columbia, is still doing that … and I wrote, ‘that is my comment’ … so there’s a clear agenda, and the agenda is problematic because The New York Times portrays itself as the unbiased arbiter of the world. Yet when you look at the reporters’ social media accounts, you can see not only are they not unbiased, but they are biased in a very specific way. So I think we have a much steeper hill to climb than we believe.”

“The New York Times portrays itself as the unbiased arbiter of the world. Yet when you look at the reporters’ social media accounts, you can see not only are they not unbiased, but they are biased in a very specific way. So I think we have a much steeper hill to climb than we believe.”

Otterman, one of the co-authors of the Times article in question, told The Journal that it was “accurate” for them to report that Davidai declined an interview request and that “interview subjects cannot dictate which reporters should cover what topic for obvious reasons.” Regarding their use of the word “falsely,” Otterman said that “we will have to check [with] our editor how we should respond. I think the idea was signaling to readers that Rashid Khalidi is not an actual Hamas spokesperson, in case they thought he could be.”

Davidai said that he has received “incredible” support from the Jewish community as well as non-Jewish allies. “They’ve been helping me stay afloat because honestly, in the past few days I felt like I was drowning, and to have this entire community stand up for me and with me helped me keep my head above water,” he said. “And I think what is happening is that people realize that, if this is done to me, and if they’re able to silence me, then they are going to be able to do this to everyone… I’m just so immensely grateful for the community.”

On the morning of Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacked Israel as the country was preparing to celebrate Simchat Torah. 

Consequently, Simchat Torah, the most joyful day on the Jewish calendar, is now intrinsically connected to one of the darkest days in modern Jewish history.

This month marks the first Simchat Torah since the tragic events of Oct. 7.

In acknowledgment of this, 1,600 synagogues around the world are participating in the Simchat Torah Project, a global undertaking to provide synagogues with special Torah scroll covers that mark the first yahrzeit of Oct. 7. Each cover is embroidered with the Israeli flag and a phrase from the book of Kohelet (Ecclesiastes), read during Sukkot, that says: “There is a time to mourn, and a time to dance.” 

Additionally, each Torah cover is embroidered with the name of one of the approximately 1,200 victims of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack or the name of an Israeli soldier who has died during Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza.

Sinai Temple is among the local congregations participating in the initiative. According to Sinai Co-Senior Rabbi Erez Sherman, the Conservative synagogue commissioned two Torah covers, each honoring the memory of two individuals affected by Oct. 7 who also happen to be relatives of Sinai Temple congregants.

With its participation in the project, Sinai is honoring the memory of hostage Amiram Cooper, who has been declared dead — his body yet to be returned — and was the uncle of Sinai Temple congregant Rona Passman. The congregation’s other new Torah cover honors the life of Niv Raviv, who was killed on Oct. 7 in Kibbutz Kfar Azza. Raviv was the cousin of Sinai Temple congregant Stacy Sharf. 

On Oct. 24, the Sinai Temple community will take two of its Torahs adorned with these commissioned covers to an event in the streets surrounding its Westwood campus. The program will feature a live band along with an ice cream truck and snacks. Congregants will sing and dance with the Torahs and unroll one of the Torah scrolls, as is customarily done on Simchat Torah. Attendees of the event — held from 5:30-6:30 p.m. — are encouraged to wear blue and white.

Another major initiative is the Simchat Torah Challenge, which encourages weekly Torah study so that the honoring of Oct. 7 victims lasts all year (see David Suissa’s column this week).

Across town from Sinai Temple, Wilshire Boulevard Temple is also marking Simchat Torah with a community gathering that pays tribute to the survivors and victims of Oct. 7, including those killed at the Nova music festival in Israel. The synagogue’s Oct. 25 event — ”Honoring Nova: A Music Festival Simchat Torah Experience” — features a Nova survivor, a live Israeli DJ, a light show, food vendors and artistic displays.

During his recent sermon at Sinai delivered on Kol Nidre, Sherman described the community’s participation in the Simchat Torah Project and the community’s plans for the holiday, which marks the end of one and the beginning of another annual cycle of readings from the Torah.

“We as a community will dance through our tears,” Sherman said, appearing on the bimah with Sinai Co-Senior Rabbi Nicole Guzik. “We will take these Torahs to the streets, and we will dance again!”

“We as a community will dance through our tears,” Sherman said, appearing on the bimah with Sinai Co-Senior Rabbi Nicole Guzik. “We will take these [specially embroidered] Torahs to the streets, and we will dance again!” 

Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh, vice president of Jewish engagement at American Jewish University, was among the city’s spiritual leaders wrestling with how to celebrate Simchat Torah this year. In a phone interview, she said the significance of Simchat Torah is that it emphasizes the cyclical nature of life and the importance of celebrating new beginnings even amidst endings. She connected this to the current global challenges, particularly the ongoing conflict in the Middle East and the perpetual hope among Israelis for the release of the remaining hostages. 

“We are a religion that chooses life and [the onus is on us] to choose to dance again with the Torah,” Rabizadeh said, “even though the holiday falls on a day when so many died.”

The female Persian rabbi said dancing with the Torah, as is done on Simchat Torah, can be a powerful symbol of embracing life, while beginning a new Torah cycle is a symbol of continuity. 

At a moment when the Jewish people in Israel are currently in an existential war with neighbors who’d like to see it wiped off the map, a message of Jewish continuity, she said, couldn’t be timelier.

Local writer Eliyahu Abramson said the community, still grappling with the trauma of Oct. 7, ought to double down on the joy of Simchat Torah. 

As a community, Abramson told the Journal in a phone interview, “We draw strength from crises.”

Abramson said the holiday’s themes of renewal resonate with the geopolitical realities in the Middle East. Just as Simchat Torah provides an opportunity to begin the Torah anew, Israel is looking to embark on a new beginning after the trauma of last year’s attack, he said.

Thus, even as we remember what happened last year on Simchat Torah, this year, Simchat Torah obliges the community to keep the celebratory and joyful spark alive. 

In other words, “We will dance again.”