PEOPLE

O

n a Sabbath morning
this July, members of
Congregation Zichron
Yosef in Jerusalem celebrated
the arrival of a Torah scroll
from Hungary that had sur-
vived the Holocaust. They
sang and danced in the tradi-
tional circles around the
bimah in tribute to a remnant
from the once-flourishing
Jewish community of Hun-
gary, and in gratitude that a
Torah had survived and made
its way- to Israel.
"Who knows what the
story of this Sefer Ibrah is?"
Rabbi Sholom Gold, former-
ly of West Hempstead, new
York and lbronto, Canada,
asked in his sermon. "Who
knows how many hostile and
hating hands have held this
torah, how close it came to
being destroyed?"
-There are estimated to b _ e
another 1,00 . 0 torah scrolls in
Hungary, each with its own
story. Most are beyond repair
and must be buried. The week
before Congregation Zichron
Yosef welcomed its "new"
Ibrah, a funeral was held on
Har Menuhot for about 100
other scrolls.
Avraham Dafne, the man
responsible for bringing the
lbrah to Jerusalem, doesn't
have much information about
its history. He found it in
Budape,st, and estimates that
it was written in the 19th
century.
"Bringing a Ibrah out of
Hungary was a dream of 30
years," says Dab.% a Holo-
caust survivor who arrived in

J ■

92

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1989

Celebratio
Of Life

Avraham Dafne, a Holocaust survivor,
recently fulfilled his dream: to donate
a Torah from the once-flourishing
Hungarian Jewish community,
to his congregation in Israel.

JOEL REBIBO

Special to The Jewish News

Israel in 1947. "I had always
wanted to do something in
memory of my father, Tzvi. If
I had had the means, I would
have built a synagogue in his
honor. But that wasn't possi-
ble, so I was determined to
buy a Sefer lbrah instead."
Dafne, born Avraham Lor-
berbaum 64 years ago in
Romania, takes great pride in
his family's roots. He shows
a visitor an eight-page geneo-
logic table and points out Reb
Menahem Nahum of Cher-
nobyl, an 18th century
contemporary of . the Ba'al
Shem Toy, the founder of
Hassidism, from his mother's

side, and Reb Ya'acov Lober-
baumof Gallitzia (1760-1828)
from his father's. He can trace
his family back to Rashi, the
11th century commentator.
Dafne grew up in a village
in. Moldova. Just two months
before the Holocaust came to
Romania on June 21, 1941, he
was sent to Bucharest to pre-
pare for the trip to Palestine.
"I was saved from the con-
centration camps because
Bucharest was a big place
where you could bribe of-
ficials and stay out of
trouble," he recalls.
After the war, he wa sent to
the refugee camps of Cyprus,

then to Palestine where he
settled in Netanya and
taught Bible and Oral Law in
a secular high school.
In 1982, he was sent back
to Romania as a represen-
tative of the Jewish Agency.
Though he had never been or-
dained, he served as a rabbi to
26 far-flung Jewish commu-
nities there before returning
to Israel and moving to
Jerusalem.
In 1987, on Passover eve, he
made his first trip to
Hungary.
"There are about 70,000
Jews in Hungary, 50,000 of
whom live in Budapest," he

says. "I found two syna-
gogues in Budapest. The Or-
thodox one, which was full of
tourists but which never had
more than 15 or 16 men at-
tending a service and in
which I never saw a young
person praying.
"The Conservative syna-
gogue, on the other hand, was
thriving. It was full of young
couples."
On a second visit in Decem-
ber 1987, Dafne met two
scribes who had been sent to
Hungary by the Israeli gov-
ernment to examine the con-
dition and value of the Torah
scrolls in Hungary. They told
him that most of the scrolls
in the country were not
kosher, but in Tokay there
were five scrolls of rare
beauty.
"There is one Jew left in
Tbkay and he is responsible
for those five lbrah scrolls.
He refuses to sell them. He
wants to give them to a
Hungarian Jewish communi-
ty that has settled in Tifrah,
a Negev settlement in Israel,"
Dafne was told.
Dafne decided there and
then that he would try to get
one of those five scrolls and
bring it back with him to
Jerusalem, to a synagogue
built by C_anadian Avram
Silver in memory of his
father, Yosef. Part of his
motivation was to help save a
Tbrah that had escaped the
Holocaust and part was eco-
nomics. While a Torah in
Hungary costs $3,000 to
$6,000, a `Thrall in Israel costs

