Historic fragile Torah scrolls on display – but only for moments – before Shavuot
Torah scrolls hidden by Muslim mufti in Rhodes after Nazis invaded in Second World War is among treasures on display at National Library of Israel
Treasured Torah which can only be displayed for a few minutes at a time have gone on show in the days before Shavuot.
The National Library of Israel (NLI) has released a series of video clips featuring four of the most significant Torah scrolls from its world-leading Judaica collection.
They are so delicate, the Torah scrolls are not available for public viewing – they were only brought out from the NLI vaults for a few minutes to be filmed and photographed, with approval and supervision from conservation experts.
Shavuot, the Jewish holiday celebrating the giving of the Torah, is celebrated this year from June 4 in the evening until nightfall of the following day.
The items featured include fragments from a 1,000 year-old Yemenite Torah scroll, which were found in a bookbinding, as well as one of the world’s smallest legible Torah scrolls, measuring just six centimeters – about two-and-a-third inches in height.
The other two scrolls featured have exceptional stories behind them.
Scholars believe that the “Rhodes Torah” was written in Iberia in the 15th century, and that Sephardic refugees brought it to Rhodes, where it was used for hundreds of years in the Kahal Shalom Synagogue, now the oldest synagogue in Greece.
Just a few days before the Nazis deported nearly all of Rhodes’ Jews in 1944, the scroll was smuggled out and placed in the custody of the local mufti, Sheikh Suleyman Kasiloglou.
The mufti is said to have hidden the Torah under the pulpit of a local mosque, and the scroll subsequently survived the war, even though the vast majority of the Rhodes Jewish community did not.
The final scroll featured in the series was believed to have been owned by Saul Wahl, a prominent Jewish merchant and adviser to royalty who, according to legend, served as King of Poland for just one day in the late 16th century.
The Saul Wahl Torah features staves made of ivory and horns, and decorated with silver.
It also comes with its own miniature holy ark, featuring a door made from a 17th century Torah shield.
Each day leading up to Shavuot weekend, the National Library of Israel is posting a new clip on its English Facebook and Twitter accounts.
The NLI’s world-leading Haim and Salomon Judaica Collection includes
- the vast majority of Hebrew and Jewish books, journals and magazines ever published;
- thousands of Hebrew-letter manuscripts,
- digital and microfilm copies of some 90,000 such manuscripts from collections across the globe;
- the world’s largest collection of Jewish music;
- hundreds of personal archives of leading figures.
- Maimonides’ commentary on the Mishna in his own handwriting;
- the world’s largest collections of ketubot and Haggadot;
- Hebrew books dating to the advent of Hebrew printing;
- the Gershom Scholem Library – the world’s foremost resource for the study of Kabbalah, Jewish Mysticism and Hasidism.
The entire NLI collection will soon move to the new National Library of Israel next to the Knesset in Jerusalem early next year.
See the scrolls here: https://blog.nli.org.il/en/lbh-torah-scrolls/
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