SAFED, ISRAEL – Throngs of celebrants danced, sang and jumped their way through the stone corridors of the Old City of Safed Wednesday evening, knifing into the sky six Torah scrolls stolen from the historic Tzemach Tzedek Synagogue and recovered days before by Israel Police.
The celebratory procession of the recovered scrolls began in front of the City Hall, where community leaders addressed an estimated 800 adults, yeshiva students and children, including the three who discovered the missing Torahs on Sunday, with words of praise, Torah-based lessons and encouragement.
Built in the early 1800s by the followers of the Third Chabad Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel, who was also known as the “Tzemach Tzedek,” the synagogue holds a special place in the hearts of Chabad-Lubavitch Chasidim all over the globe. In the early 20th century, as the local Lubavitch community left the city, the building fell into disrepair, but in the 1973, the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory, dispatched the late Rabbi Aryeh Leib and Sarah Kaplan to Safed to serve as his emissaries. Among their first priorities was to rebuild the synagogue to its former glory in time for Rosh Hashanah.
The Kaplans’ son, Chabad-Lubavitch of Safed director Rabbi Chaim Kaplan, said the returned scrolls should inspire the community to also “return more Jews” to their roots and the congregation.
“We are humbled and we are blessed, and G‑d should spread the blessings and kindness he gave to us to the farthest reaches,” Sarah Marzel, co-director of the Tzemach Tzedek and nearby Chabad House of the Old City of Safed, said over the din of ecstatic revelers as the procession approached the synagogue.
The Torahs were stolen in the early morning hours of May 5 before worshippers arrived for Sabbath services. One of the scrolls had been dedicated in memory of Rabbi Aryeh Leib Kaplan, while another was donated by the Rappaport Family in Canada, whose foundation paid for a renovation of the synagogue three years ago.
About a week after Safed detectives launched a nationwide investigation, one of the suspects told police to quit their pursuit and the Torahs would be returned. The scrolls were discovered the same day by three local boys who were playing near an old abandoned stone home covered over with brush within walking distance of the synagogue.
Ari Lesser, a student who attends the Temimei Derech yeshiva on the first floor of the synagogue, took a moment from the dancing to wax philosophical about the parade and communal unity: “Apparently, G‑d took the Torahs away and brought them back so we could have this great celebration.”
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