Oklahoma City Chabad center dedicates second Torah scroll

Goldman and about 275 people gathered at the center, 3000 W Hefner, to celebrate the completion of Chabad's second Torah scroll.

“The Torah really represents the people,” Goldman said. “It represents our mission, our joy in life to bring people back to Jewish life, back to the Torah.”

Visitors celebrated the completion and dedication of the Paul and Sabina Schechter Oklahoma Unity Torah. Goldman said Ed Kaswan, of Oklahoma City, helped provide much of the funding for the center's second Torah scroll in honor of his aunt and uncle, the Schechters, who searched for him after World War II and welcomed him into their home in the United States.

Kaswan helped commission the center's first Torah scroll in memory of his parents, who put him on a kindertransport, a train in which Jewish children rode to escape the Nazis.

Goldman said a professional scribe in Israel was commissioned to create the Sefer Torah, a special handwritten copy of the Torah. He said the Israeli scribe completed all but the last word of the Torah. The last word was completed in Oklahoma City by Rabbi Moshe Klein, a Brooklyn, N.Y., scribe, with the help of Goldman and Chabad's special guests.

Rabbi Yehuda Weg, director of Chabad Oklahoma, based in Tulsa, told the audience Sunday that each letter of the Jewish Holy book is important.

“God Himself came down to this world and gave us this incredible gift,” he said.

Written for Oklahoma

In a poignant ceremony, Kaswan and his great-nephew Jonathan Schechter, of Buffalo, N.Y., helped Klein write the first letters of the Torah's last word, “Israel.” Goldman, as the center's rabbi, completed the last letters, prompting the crowd to stand and applaud enthusiastically.