This Sunday, Tierra Rejada Road in Moorpark will be enlivened by a parade of people dancing to traditional music in celebration of a Torah that brings together the past and present for residents of the Jewish faith.
The dedication ceremony will honor the completion of the new Torah, said Rabbi Shimy Heidingsfeld and his wife, Devorah, founders of the Chabad Jewish Center of Moorpark.
“It’s God’s book, so it’s a special event to finish a Torah scroll, and then a double celebration that we’re actually able to bring it into our community,” the rabbi said.
Every copy of the Torah must be carefully handwritten by an expert scribe and can take up to a year to create. New Torahs come at great expense, and this is the Moorpark community’s first. Previously, the Chabad used a refurbished Torah.
Heidingsfeld describes it as “the guidebook of the Jewish people” that not only records God’s word but also provides a way for the community to connect to God. His wife likens the celebration to a wedding ceremony, as the Torah represents a “marriage contract with God.”
“We get a canopy and we put the Torah under the canopy, and we’re dancing with the Torah because we’re so excited that we have this Torah in our community and that we are not married to God but bonded with God,” she said.
Each of the scroll’s 600,000 letters represents the Jewish people, and each letter must be perfectly formed for the Torah to be valid.
“ Even if there is a tiny scratch, you can’t use it,” Devorah Heidingsfeld said. “And that represents the Jewish people, that even if one person is in pain … (it shows) how we’re all responsible for each other, how we’re all united, and how we’re all integral to the community.”
The celebration holds personal significance for the Heidingsfelds. The new Torah was commissioned to honor Devorah’s father, Rabbi Menachem Ahron ben Yosef Hakohen Rodal of Los Angeles, who died a year ago.
He was a teacher whose passion was “bringing nature and the Torah together” through teaching science as well as all Jewish subjects, she said.
In the Jewish faith, the greatest thing one can do while alive is good deeds, Devorah Heidingsfeld said, but after death, one can no longer do these. Instead, loved ones can do good deeds on their behalf.
“When we do things for the merit of a soul, that’s like the greatest elevation and the greatest gift we can give somebody who passed away,” she said. “So writing a Torah scroll in their memory is like the greatest gift.”
More than 600 people worldwide donated to help fund the new Torah. People from the Moorpark community contributed, as well as those from the communities of Devorah Heidingsfeld’s 10 siblings and others who were affected by her father’s life and teaching.
Donors can purchase anywhere from one letter in the Torah to a full portion for weekly study, according to the donation website, rabbirodal.com.
“(A donation is) basically saying, ‘I am now part of this entire project,’” Devorah Heidingsfeld said. “It’s as if they have the entire Torah.”
The new Torah was written in Israel, but the last paragraph of the scroll will be finished by an expert scribe at the Chabad Jewish Center of Moorpark at 4 p.m. May 27.
The parade, dancing and celebrations, including food and activities for children, will follow. The event is free and open to the public. The chabad is at 4225A Tierra Rejada Road.
The Heidingsfelds said their goal—and the goal of the Chabad—is to teach the community about Judaism and Jewish heritage, regardless of one’s background or affiliation.
Called “the most precious article in Jewish life” on the Chabad website, the Torah remains at the center of the faith’s 3,300-year history.
“The timeless messages of the Torah are relevant in our current times as much as (they were when) it was given at Mount Sinai,” the rabbi said.
This article was edited June 1, 2018 at 12:51 p.m. to correct the byline.