The 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht was
commemorated by the dedication of the
Yanov Torah, donated to HUC-JIR/Los
Angeles by Rabbi Erwin Herman, z”l, and
his wife, Agnes. It was Rabbi Herman’s
hope that this Torah, rescued out of the
ashes of the Holocaust, would travel with
rabbinical students to their pulpits, so that
a new generation of Jews would bring the
scroll back to life and with it a new era of
hope for Jews everywhere. Excerpted here
is the student sermon presented at this
memorable event.
I
n the Yanov work camp at a time when
hope was nearly impossible, when the
greatest horrors imaginable had been ex-
ceeded, when hunger had reached its
ultimate agony, a small community risked
everything in order to smuggle in a
Sefer
Torah
.
These inmates risked not only their
lives but also the enduring shame of sinning
against God. They desecrated the
Torah
by
tearing it into pieces. Yet they acted in the
face of these risks, in order to be comforted
by the
Torah’s
light.
This is a
Torah
that was hidden column
by column in bedposts, inside pipes, under
floor boards, anyplace where it might be safe.
Its discovery would have certainly meant the
death of its stewards, but its presence was also
their life-force. After the liberation, it was lov-
ingly patched together by the lonely fingers of
people who had lost everything but their tra-
dition. Like the lives of the survivors, this
Torah
would never be the same, stitched back
together yet bearing its physical scars forever.
Receiving this
Torah
on the eve of the
70
th anniversary of
Kristallnacht
,
during
Parshat Lech Lecha,
is not without signifi-
cance. We read of
Avram
receiving a divine
call to journey not only physically to the land
of Israel, but also spiritually inward to his
soul. As we are taught by the Hasidic mas-
ters,
Lech Lecha
can mean to travel within
ourselves. Often we consider these two in-
terpretations separately.
We marvel at
Avram’s
brave physical
journey and we ponder the meaning in his
spiritual journey. But the Yanov
Torah
repre-
sents the symmetry and connectedness of
both journeys. From the cemetery, through
the hands of those who smuggled it into the
camp, to its stay in Russia, to its safety with
Rabbi Erwin Herman,
z”l
,
and his wife,
Agnes, and now to us, this
Torah
’
s travels
from captivity to freedom, from brokenness
to repair, from hopelessness to faith, can in-
spire us to attempt a spiritual journey akin
to the one God demanded of
Avram.
Avram’s willingness to leave everything
behind and journey to the unknown suggests
that he possessed a powerful faith in God.
We, however, often struggle with our faith in
God; we are often afraid to admit to our-
selves and each other that after answering
God’s call to us, “
Lech Lecha
,”
to travel in-
ward, all we found were unanswered
questions. These doubts can paralyze us on
our personal journeys of faith as we struggle
with God and our own humanity.
Rabbi Aryeh Leib of Ger wrote, “The
effects of any earthly struggle with God must
also affect God. The battle is not between us
and some independent power. The struggle
goes on inside God. It is a part of God; it is
a part of ourselves.” Thus, even when we
struggle, we journey.
Doubt is a profound element of our hu-
manity. We doubt each other, we doubt
ourselves, and when we look at the destruc-
tion and disorder in the world, we can’t help
but doubt God. But when we allow our
doubt and struggle with God to become a
part of us, when we embrace our doubt, we
become one step closer to the divine, one
step closer to faith.
48
| THE CHRONICLE
MEET HUC-J IR’S STUDENTS
THE YANOV TORAH AND
OUR FRAGILE FAITH
Rabbi Joel Simonds, L ’09
HUC-JIR students and Agnes Herman
(
center) at the dedication of the Yanov Torah.
