“And Hashem said to Satan: Is this one not a brand plucked from the fire?" Vayomer Hashem el Hasatan; Halo zeh oud mutsal mi’esh.
The above phrase, found in the Prophets, the Book of Zechariah (3:2), became a prescient prophecy used to describe Jewish survival. It applied to Jews who survived in their own land where the Holy Temples were burned and cities razed to the ground, in the many lands where exiled Jews suffered pogroms and persecutions, and when Arab attempts to thwart the Return to Zion included unspeakable violence before and since the establishment of the tiny Jewish state.
In the past century, the “smoldering brand plucked from the fire" was a tragic description of Holocaust survivors and the remnants of Jewish life saved while homes, yeshivas, synagogues, friends and relatives ascended to the heavens in chariots of fire. Then the horrific events of October 7, 2023 brought the verse starkly back to life.
Recently, two burning brands, one plucked from the fire of the Holocaust and the other from the fires at Kibbutz Nahal Oz, united to form a blaze of everlasting light.
The story begins in the town of Eich near Worms, Germany, whose Jews, seeing the handwriting on the wall, fled the Reich en masse in 1937. Josef Kahn’s family of kohanim was among the last to leave and Josef decided to try to save one of the Torah scrolls, managing to take it to America with them, his son guarding it in his bed on board the ship on which they travelled.
The Torah was given to the Shaarei HaTikva (Gates of Hope) Synagogue in Washington Heights, an upper Manhattan neighborhood peopled with many Jews of German origin (yekkes, as they are still called) and Josef’s children, who grew up there, took the placing of the Torah as an established fact, and did not even pass on the story to their descendants.
Josef Kahn’s granddaughter, Miriam, married Rabbi Dr. Aaron Adler, a musmach of Yeshiva University who studied under Rav J.B. Soloveitchik zt"l, and the couple made aliya, raising their six offspring in Israel, contributing to the state in their individual fields, and raising their children to do the same (one is a doctor, one lives on a kibbutz, and another an El Al pilot, for example), but knowing nothing of the Torah in the Washington Heights shul. One day, when their daughter Chana was visiting her elderly grandmother (Josef’s daughter) in New York, the conversation turned to family history. Going through pictures and letters together with her Savta, she found a thank you note from the Shaarei HaTikva shul for a Torah scroll and the story was revealed. Since the shul was on the verge of closing due to changes in the neighborhood’s residents and was in the possession of 30 Torah Scrolls, the shul’s Rabbi Hoffman agreed to give the Adler family the Sefer Torah.
That agreement sounds simple, but as it turns out, there was no identification on three of the Torah scrolls (the rest were clearly labelled) and it took the professional expertise of Machon Ot, headed by Rabbi Ytschak Goldstein, to pronounce which one was written in the specific style of South Germany’s scribes of that period and was on klaf (parchment) consistent with the age of the scroll donated by Josef Kahn. The Adlers had the entire scroll checked letter by letter, brought it back to Israel, but waited to order a new me'il ( traditional velvet, decorated mantle) for the Torah scroll until its new home was decided upon.
And then came October 7.
Fifteen members of Nahal Oz, the secular pioneering kibbutz founded by IDF Nahal brigade members from the socialist Mapai party in 1951 in the Gaza Envelope, met their deaths at the hands of brutal Hamas Nukhba murderers on October 7, 2023, while others were abducted to the Gaza Strip and homes were burned and looted. Today, with indomitable Israeli spirit, those “burning sticks" snatched from the all-consuming genocidal fire, are returning to their beloved kibbutz, where there is now a new mechina (pre-army institute) for secular, traditional and observant pre army youngsters who study together. A house of prayer (Beit Tefilla) is under construction at the request of the young members for the use of soldiers stationed there, the mechina students and residents who wish to meet and pray.
The Adler family felt that Nahal Oz was the suitable home for the Torah that was a "burning brand saved from the fire" of Kristallnacht. Let it be read and treasured by the “burning brands saved from the fire" of the Nazi Nukhba murderers, they said. The kibbutz was only too happy to connect the two stories and recently, a joyous “Hachnasat Sefer Torah" (the celebration when a new Torah scroll is placed in the Holy Ark) took place at Nahal Oz.
Chana spoke at the ceremony and told the meaningful story, saying “this Torah Scroll, exiled from where it was written near Worms to the Shaarei HaTikva shul, tells us that our nation's story will have a happy end. The decision to bring the Torah to Nahal Oz, continues the Scroll’s journey back to the land from where we were exiled and to which we have returned. Together, we will write the next chapters of the story - about hope, resurrection and unity." She then read from Meir Shalev’s speech written for then President Weitzman in the German Parliament.
And the me'il? Rabbi Adler explained that it “has the Priestly Blessing befitting the family of Cohanim who donated it, but is dominated by the symbol of unity expressed in the appliqued High Priest’s choshen which had a jewel for each of the Tribes of Israel under the words Yachad Shivtei Yisrael - the united tribes of Israel - because we are one."
“To us," Kibbutz Nahal Oz representative Ronit Goldberg said," it symbolizes resurrection. Many of our young people have found their attachment to Judaism in this last war, many of the families want a spiritual anchor once they are home again. It is a great privilege to celebrate the arrival of a Torah scroll while we are returning, and we are very grateful to the Adler family. It does not contradict the fact that the kibbutz is not religious. And be’ezrat Hashem, one day there will be a shul here, where there never was one before."
Burning sticks snatched from the fire, lighting up the letters on the Torah parchment and the hearts of those whose eternal flame it is.
And the Book of Zecharia continues: “And the angel said to him, ‘... I have clad you with clean garments...On that day, says the Lord of Hosts, you shall call - each man to his neighbor - to come under his vine and under his fig tree."