The lesbians and gay men who founded Congregation Beth Chayim Chadashim in Los Angeles, also known as BCC, in 1972—the first-ever LGBT synagogue—reflected the depth of its importance to themselves and their community by choosing a name meaning “House of New Life.”
[RELATED: Czech Torahs reunite at Holocaust Museum]
The very next year, 1973, BCC welcomed its Holocaust Survivor Torah Scroll, which comes from Chotěboř, located southeast of Prague in today’s Czech Republic—a town whose last Jewish residents were deported in 1942. BCC’s scroll, on loan from the Memorial Scrolls Trust in England, is featured in a special exhibition of rescued scrolls at the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust through May 9.
The story of how BCC met a survivor of Chotěboř began in 2005, when BCC engaged a Sofer, a Torah scribe, to help us repair a passage from our scroll.
New York-based Sofer Neil Yerman spent a weekend at BCC, guiding more than 100 BCC members as we each re-inscribed a letter in a portion of our Shoah Torah scroll that includes the passage from Deuteronomy 30:19—“Life and death have I set before you…that you may choose life.”
That is a verse that especially resonates for BCC, says Lisa Edwards, Senior Rabbi of BCC, “for we are part of a community that historically has faced rejection, discrimination, persecution and even death. For us, to ‘choose life’ means to live proudly and joyfully, knowing that we are all created in God’s image.”
As a community (I have been a member since 2000) we read these Torah verses each Yom Kippur, made all the more poignant and powerful for us by the history of the survivor scroll from which we read.
Later in 2005, in observance of the 67th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, BCC organized a reunion of the 28 Czech survivor scrolls now cared for by Jewish communities around Southern California.
Among the 400 people gathered to celebrate was 77-year-old Olga Grilli, born Gabanyiova, a native of Chotěboř.
We had learned that, at age 11 in 1939, Olga escaped to England on the last Kindertransport train organized by a young Englishman, Nicolas Winton, who rescued 669 Jewish children from Czechoslovakia.
Olga came to us because a member of BCC, Stephen Sass, found Olga’s story among the interviews at the Spielberg Shoah Visual History Foundation. We contacted her, and with her children and grandchildren, Olga traveled to Los Angeles to participate in our “Etz Chayim” Kristallnacht observance.
The procession into the sanctuary of 28 survivor Torah scrolls was led by Olga in her wheelchair, our Chotěboř Torah scroll held in her tender embrace.
Olga recalls, “When I saw the scroll in Los Angeles, when I held it in my arms, it was a continuity. I am happy it found such a wonderful home where there are people who will take care of it.”
“BCC is honored to keep alive this precious Torah scroll that has been entrusted to us,” says Edwards, “and in so doing to keep alive the memories of Olga and her community.”
Read more about the story of BCC’s scroll and its special friendship with survivor Olga Grill, from the same Czech town.
Sylvia Sukop is a writer/editor and 2016 Fellow of the NewGround Muslim-Jewish Partnership for Change. A longtime member of Beth Chayim Chadashim, she co-chaired the “Etz Chayim” Czech Torah scrolls reunion in 2005. You can read her essay on the early history of BCC in the anthology LAtitudes: An Angeleno’s Atlas (Heyday, 2015).
