Torah scrolls
Torah scrollsAbir Sultan, Flash 90

Two new Torah scrolls donated to Prague's Great Synagogue were inaugurated on Sunday during a festive ceremony.

This is the first time since World War II that the Prague Jewish community received new Torah scrolls.

During the Holocaust, Prague's large Jewish community was almost completely wiped out: Prior to World War II, 125,000 Jews lived in the city. The Holocaust wiped out at least 80,000 of them.

Today, between 15-20 thousand Jews live in the city, and most are not registered as members of the Jewish community, and many prefer to hide the fact they are Jewish.

The new Torah scrolls were written in Israel and then flown to Prague, where a ceremony in which the last few letters of each scroll were written.

After the completion of the scrolls, a festive inauguration ceremony was held.

Participants danced with the Torah scrolls in the streets near the 700-year-old synagogue, which is one of the oldest in Europe and serves as a popular tourist attraction for those visiting from Israel.

"After many long years in which Torah scrolls were destroyed and burned, the Jewish community and its rabbi are celebrating new Torah scrolls," Jewish Community of the Czech Republic Vice President Frantisek Banai said. "This is the best expression of the growth of Prague's Jewish community."