Pho tos co urttsy Drisha Inst itu te

Spirituality

Torah's

Sacred scroll confiscated from Saddam Hussein
makes its way to women's institute.

Former Drisha
student Liw Schlaff
dances with a
Torah
dedicated in
memory of lyer
grandfatben

JEANNINE MERCER
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

New York

A

group of female Jewish
scholars recently danced
joyously with a 200-year-
old born in Iraq and once
held prisoner by Saddam Hussein.
"Here ye! Here ye! Here comes the
Sefer Torah!" the women of the
Drisha Institute exclaimed at the
arrival of the Torah, which had made
a difficult journey from Iraq to the
United States by way of Jordan and
Israel.
"Without a doubt, I am sure that
the people who started with this
Torah could not imagine that its
home would be a women's study

Women at New York's Drisha Institute dance
.; with a 200-year-old Iraqi Torah.

group," said Nina Bruder, executive
director of Drisha, a Jewish women's
study program.
Drisha's Torah, whose combination
of flat mulberry-juice ink and raised
lettering indicate that it is 200 years
old, was abandoned in a Baghdad
synagogue with many other Torah
scrolls during the exodus of Iraqi Jews -
to Israel in 1948.
There the Torahs remained, collect-
ing desert dust until Hussein, the
Iraqi dictator, stockpiled and hid
them not long before the start of the
1991 Persian Gulf War.
But the same year, this Torah was
rescued, along with 34 others, by an
Iraqi Muslim. He stole them and
stuffed them into the tires of Jordan-
bound trucks. From there, the sacred

texts were transferred into Israeli
hands.
Iraqi authorities caught the man
and severely beat him. An unknown
number of Torahs remain in Hussein's
possession.
Its a remarkable story," said Blu
Greenberg, whose son helped repair
one of the smuggled Torahs a year ago.
It was during this time that
Greenberg was chosen as Drisha's
guest of honor at its 20th dinner
anniversary. Greenberg, an Orthodox
feminist author and activist, is a "great
admirer" of Drisha.
Feeling shy about being in the spot-
light, she half-jokingly told Drisha, "If
you get me off the hook" as a dinner
speaker, "I'll try to get a Sefer Torah
for you." Greenberg wasn't relieved

from her speaking engagement, but
after several discussions with her son
and family, they decided to present
the Torah to Drisha as a gift.
They dedicated the scroll to
Greenberg's father, Rabbi Sam
Genauer, who is remembered for his
hour-long Torah study before work
each day. His granddaughter, Lisa
Schlaff, formerly studied at Drisha, in
part because of his influence.
"It's .a full-size Torah. Everyone was
worried that it would be too heavy to
lift," said Drisha's Bruder.
Drisha is the first women's study
group in America to have its own
Torah. Only two such groups in Israel
have their own Torahs. An unknown
number of Torahs remain in Hussein's
possession. I 1

ts,

12/17
1999

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