THIS ISLAND WAS CALLED BY THE JEWS WHO LIVED THERE
‘LA CHICA YERUSHALAYIM’ (THE SMALL JERUSALEM), SUCH WAS
THE STRENGTH OF THE IDENTITY OF ITS PEOPLE WITH BOTH
THEIR PLACE OF RESIDENCE AND THEIR RELIGION.
same place my father celebrated his barmitzvah, surrounded by second, third and
fourth generation Rhodeslis,” recounts
Menashe. They visited all the old Jewish
sites of interest, and stood at the door to
the house that his father grew up in,
which was a moving and surreal experience. “I felt so proud of where I came
from, and how we have kept the heritage
alive at home all this time.”
Last year, Turiel and 450 others went to
Rhodes for the 70-year commemoration of
the deportation of Jews from the island in
1944. “This island was called by the Jews
who lived there ‘la chica Yerushalayim’ (the
small Jerusalem in Ladino),” he recounts,
such was the strength of the identity of its
people with both their place of residence
and their religion, that they took all they
loved from home, wherever it was that they
had been dispersed from, and brought new
meaning to where they lived by adding that
special, Jewish touch to its bricks and mortar. And here he was, remembering the
Jews of Rhodes, all but wiped out in a single day, but who will never be forgotten by
those who managed to get out in time because it still defines who they are to this
very day. The community’s ties to its heritage are strong, and while they are warm
and embracing of others, they are also
close-knit. So much so that at the recent
hachnasat sefer Torah they celebrated, the
sofer even hailed from the shul, a truly inhouse Torah written by and for the people.
14 JEWISH LIFE
ISSUE 86
THE SOFER AND THE TORAH
Rabbi Dovi Kazilsky, son of the presiding
Rabbi of the JSHC Rabbi Moshe Kazilsky,
was the scribe who got to make a South
African first by writing a Torah for a congregation that he is an integral part of, being the son of its Rabbi and a member
there since the time he was a small boy.
“This project differed from all other
work that I do in that usually, once the
work I have written, be it a mezuzah, or a
ketubah, leaves my office, I usually don’t
see it again. But with this Torah, it was
destined for the very shul that I am intimately connected to. It’s a great privilege
to write a Torah for the congregation that
I was brought up in, where I had my barmitzvah, my aufruf, and where I daven every week. Being able to give back to a really special community in such a way is
indeed a great privilege. This project was
very unique for me not only in the fact
that I was writing the Torah in the memory of my grandfather – the honorary life
gabbai of our shul, but also that I will be
able to read from this Torah in shul every
week, something which is very special.”
His grandfather, Dorel Beer, always
wanted to find ways and means to bring a
new Torah into his shul, explains Menashe,
and after his death just over two years ago,
the Kazilsky family decided to make this
dream of his a reality, with the community
members themselves the patrons of the Torah, fulfilling the mitzvah of writing a sefer
Torah by sponsoring a word, a sentence, or
a parsha. And for Rabbi Dovi, the culmination of this dream was an event that was
nothing short of spectacular, celebrated in
style with a gala dinner attended by honourees and dignitaries and the community its