The History of CTJ's Czech Torah Scroll

Congregation Tikvat Jacob Beth Torah in Manhattan Beach, California, USA is proud to welcome a new Torah scroll to our Aron HaKodsh. The scroll is from Vlašim in the Czech Republic – number 243 of 1,564 scrolls that miraculously survived the Holocaust – and CTJ is now the caretaker of this precious and historic Torah. We have hired a sofer stam to restore #243 as part of CTJ’s centennial celebration (1925-2025). This Torah is known as our “Centennial Scroll.”

There is a rich history of the Jews of Vlašim and to our scroll that has yet to be uncovered. If your family is from the Czech Republic, please contact CTJ’s President, Jeremy Stern and share your history and knowledge of the area and Jewish community there.

The Journey from Vlašim to Manhattan Beach

The 82-year 9,368 kilometer journey of this Torah from Vlašim to Manhattan Beach began in December 1942 in the town of Vlašim, when 66 Jews were rounded up by the Nazis and transported to concentration camps, where they perished from the earth, murdered as part of the Holocaust. We do not know the names of the synagogues that these Jews prayed at. Nor do we know the exact synagogue from which our Czech Torah Scroll, #243, came from. We do know that it came from Vlašim, a small town about 70 km south of Prague.

More than 1,500 Torah scrolls from what was then Czechoslovakia were saved from certain Nazi destruction. Perhaps foreseeing what was about to happen to them, the Jews of the Bohemia and Moravia regions packed their Sifrei Torah, gold and silver finials, books and textiles and sent them to the Jewish Museum in Prague where they were carefully stored and inventoried.

Only 10,000 of the more than 118,000 jews in Czechoslovakia survived the Holocaust, and they could not afford to maintain these treasures. The scrolls became property of the government. In 1963, Ralph Yablon from England purchased the scrolls and entrusted them to Westminster Synagogue in London. The Memorial Scrolls Trust was established in London, England in 1964 with the goal of distributing the scrolls to various synagogues, educational institutions, and other bodies wishing to have a memorial to the communities destroyed in the Shoah. 

How did CTJ acquire Scroll #243?

On the morning of February 5, 2024, CTJ’s President, Jeremy Stern, was reading the New York Times and came across an article about 1,564 Torah Scrolls from Czechoslovakia that had survived destruction by the Nazis during the Shoah. The article grabbed his heart and captured his attention, not just because it told an amazing story of the miraculous recovery of these scrolls in 1964, but also because he remembered clearly reading from a “Prague Torah” at his Bar Mitzvah in Detroit, MI in 1972.

The article quoted Jeffrey Ohrenstein, the Chairman of the Memorial Scrolls Trust in London, England, the organization that acquired these Torah scrolls from the Czech government in 1964. So Jeremy reached out to Jeffrey to set up a call with him and Rabbi Josh Kalev. Jeffrey told CTJ that the MST’s mission was to restore these scrolls and return them to the Jewish communities around the world so that they could serve as “silent messengers” connecting Jews today to a Jewish community in Czechoslovakia that dates back to the 10th Century.

Rewind to 1972 in suburban Detroit where Jeremy grew up, when he learned that his synagogue, Temple Beth El, had just acquired a Torah scroll from Prague, Czechoslovakia that had survived the Holocaust, and he recalls vividly reading his parsha from this scroll. As it would turn out, Mr. Ohrenstein said that Jeremy had read from Scroll Number 987, the Torah that the Memorial Scrolls Trust had entrusted to his shul with more than 50 years ago.

On May 1, 2024, CTJ applied to the Memorial Scrolls Trust to become a caretaker of a Czech Scroll, and on the next day our application was granted. Scroll #243 arrived at its new home at CTJ on July 11, 2024.

Stay tuned for more information about CTJ’s restoration of Scroll #243, our Centennial Celebration, and ways in which you can volunteer to assist in researching the history of our Centennial Scroll.