A festive Torah dedication took place last week for the Russian-speaking Brith Avraham community in New Jersey, led by community rabbi Mordechai Kenlasky and his wife. The project let any Jew buy a letter in the Torah for a symbolic $2, following the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s well-known call for every Jew to have a share in a communal Torah as a source of unity and protection.
Rabbi Kenlasky said more than 30,000 Jews from around the world purchased letters. The Book of Deuteronomy was dedicated especially in memory of Jews without a grave or headstone, including IDF fallen soldiers and victims of terror, Holocaust victims, and many Jews who died in the former Soviet Union and Russia over the years.
The final letters were completed on the eve of Rosh Chodesh Tammuz, just days before the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s memorial date, the 3rd of Tammuz. One of the event’s most striking moments came when a senior figure in the American state government, the chief of staff in the New Jersey governor’s office, arrived with her husband and two sons.
The family, described as having previously been far from any Jewish observance, experienced a historic moment there when the husband and both boys put on tefillin for the first time in their lives, alongside dozens of others celebrating what organizers called a late bar mitzvah. The final letter was written in honor of and in pure memory of the Lubavitcher Rebbe and the Rebbetzin, after which a procession moved through the street and local residents danced in honor of the Torah. When the scroll reached the synagogue, prominent community members brought out 11 Torah scrolls from the ark to welcome the new one, whose velvet cover was embroidered in gold with the slogan,
