Home’s Frail Residents Use Special Torah

At 91, Morris Jacobs finds it hard to get around without a cane, and among the many problems that presents for him is one that has special meaning to this religious Jew.

Unable to use both hands, he can no longer carry a sefer Torah, the handwritten scroll containing the first five books of the Old Testament that is read from during Jewish religious services. ( Sefer is the Hebrew word for book, or scroll.)

“I could lift it, but I couldn’t walk with it anymore, except maybe in a wheelchair, and that’s not the same thing,” Jacobs said.

Jacobs’ plight is a common one at the Greater Los Angeles Jewish Homes for the Aging’s Grancell Village in Reseda, where he has lived the past four years.

Amos Fried, Grancell Village’s social service director, said few of the 300 residents have the strength to carry a sefer Torah, normally about three feet long and weighing from 15 to 23 pounds.

None of the residents can lift it above their heads during the portion of the service when someone is required to display it to the congregation, Fried added.

The Grancell Village sisterhood helped find a solution. For four years, members of the sisterhood--whose average age is 89--worked to raise $8,000 to purchase a rare, lightweight sefer Torah.

Two-thirds the size of a standard sefer Torah and weighing about seven pounds, the scroll was crafted in Israel on thinner parchment and with lighter wood staves than are normally used.

It will be formally presented at a March 27 meeting of the sisterhood at Grancell Village.

“It’s wonderful,” said Reuben Grossman, 80, a Grancell Village resident. “Almost anyone will be able to lift it. To be honest, I never knew such a thing existed before.”

When the 130 or so members of the sisterhood began the task of raising money, they had no idea how much they would need--or where they would obtain the scroll.

While they slowly raised money, Rabbi Louis Feldman, Grancell Village’s spiritual director, began a search.

The scrolls are expensive because they are entirely handcrafted in accordance with exacting Jewish law that determines, for example, the number of lines on each parchment sheet.

A standard size sefer Torah, which may take a specially trained scribe or sofer as long as 18 months to complete, can cost $30,000. A used one in good condition can cost about half that.

Feldman assumed that he would have to settle for a used lightweight scroll, which he figured might cost only about $6,000 because of its reduced size. “I didn’t even allow myself to think about getting a new one,” he said.

While visiting relatives in Israel last year, Fried combed Jerusalem in search of a lightweight sefer Torah for the home. All he could find was a new one that cost $16,000, a prohibitive price for the sisterhood, which was collecting just a few dollars at a time.

“Nickels and dimes, that’s how we got it,” said Anna Obolsky, 85, the sisterhood president. “We had raffles, luncheons, auctions. People gave $1 or $2 in memory of somebody. At Hanukkah, they paid 50 cents or $1 to sponsor one of the lights.

“On fixed incomes, you can’t ask for much. Our dues are only $2 a year.”

Gloria Abramson, the Grancell Village activities director, said none of the sisterhood members contributed more than $20 each during the fund-raising effort. Occasionally, a relative of a sisterhood member would donate up to $50.

Abramson said the $8,000 is the most the sisterhood has ever raised.

As the fund drive proceeded, Feldman spotted an advertisement in a Los Angeles weekly Jewish newspaper. It was placed by Rabbi Samuel Zadok, a Fairfax area sofer specializing in Jewish ritual objects. Through contacts, Zadok located a new lightweight sefer Torah that could be purchased for $8,000.

The deal was completed in November, and the sefer Torah arrived in Reseda in January.

Zadok explained that the scroll had been purchased by a man for his home in the ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem neighborhood of Mea Shearim. “He was in need of money to make a bar mitzvah for his son, so he sold it.”

Until World War II and the Holocaust, Zadok said, lightweight sefer Torahs were relatively common in Europe. Poor congregations would purchase them because they were less expensive than standard sefer Torahs, he said.

“They don’t use so much parchment and wood. But because it takes the same amount of time to make one, very few are made now,” he said.

Zadok said he had been asked just one other time in recent years to find a lightweight scroll. The request came from a school that wanted its young students to be able to lift a sefer Torah.

Zadok said that on occasion he also comes across a lightweight sefer Torah in Los Angeles when he is asked to repair an older one.

The new sefer Torah will be kept in a special ark in the Grancell Village sanctuary along with the retirement and convalescent home’s three standard-size scrolls.

It will be covered with a blue and gold embroidered cloth mantle inscribed with the words: “Donated with love by Grancell Village Sisterhood.”

“It’s nice that the residents will be able to now lift the sefer Torah without fearing for their safety,” Feldman said. “But the real miracle here is that the sisterhood was able to raise the money.”

While proud of their accomplishment, members of the sisterhood were simply performing a mitzvah or religious obligation, Obolsky said. She also made it clear that she will not let the sisterhood rest.

“You know what I’d like to see next?” asked Obolsky, an 8-year Grancell Village resident. “A new curtain for the Torah ark. That would be a good next project.”