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So great to see you. I'm so happy to see you Dr Helsel. Thank you so much. Welcome, welcome. Thank you. So I heard we were gonna get to see a Torah scroll today

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. Is that true? Can I, I'd love to show you our arc and some of our see fray or our scrolls of Torah? Yeah, I'd love to. Great, please. That's this up

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here. Yes. And uh when, when we uh when we're finished, we'll close the doors so you can see the outside of the doors themselves. Every arc is um in the eastern side of uh

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of the, of the synagogue and every synagogue faces towards Jerusalem. So uh this in the northern hemisphere , uh this is facing towards Jerusalem as a way of binding all synagogues or all the Jewish people together

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in that way. So these are the doors uh and this is the uh the curtain or it's called the parot in Hebrew. And this particular one is designed, all of them are different. This is

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shows a Torah that turns into a tree of life as is shown in the book of Proverbs. It's Kim He, it is a tree of life to all who grasp it. So, so there,

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here's where we are. Uh And uh I'd love to show you. OK. So as we do in the synagogue, people are, this is a very important moment. People stand and the parole or

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the curtain is open and the Torah are here. Generally at a uh service, a Shabbat service on a Saturday morning, we take out one scroll, sometimes two, sometimes three, but generally one.

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And each of these Torahs can tell a story about its community or how it came to be. Now , if you're looking at them, you see, like, wait a second, there's one that looks

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a little bit different and that's the one in the center which looks like a cylinder. And that's a Torah that is found in the sephardic traditions, which is basically North Africa or Spain or the Middle East

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where this is a Torah that's shaped in a particular way and it's read in exactly the same way. It just has a different shape. These CRE Torah , these scrolls of Torah are from the Ashkenazi tradition

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, which is basically uh the European tradition and certainly in most American synagogues, that's what we have here too. And again, all the Torahs are the same, the five books of Moses. So before

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, and we're gonna show you this one in just a moment. But before we do, I wanna show you uh the other ones as well. This , this particular Torah was written uh for this congregation

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, it was commissioned uh for this congregation handwrit um in 1997. So it's a Torah. We use most regularly and we're very, uh it's a very dear Torah to us. These two particular tours you

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can see this covers a little bit different. Uh by the time we received this Torah around 2018, that they weren't making this color anymore. So you do the best you can. But uh this particular

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Torah tells a specific story from a particular community. Now you see the mayor family, this is their family, Torah who are a part of our community . And this Torah lived in a community in Germany

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. And you can see that that community was desecrated on November 9th, 1938 which is called the Night of Broken Glass or Crystal Nacht. This was a Torah that lived in an arc similar to this one

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, there were three sea freight, Torah there. The other two were taken out on this night and destroyed and damaged beyond repair, stepped on outside, thrown out the doors. This particular Torah was hidden

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away, stored and smuggled out of Germany. And after long places in places like South Africa, Miami , New York, it made its way here and we are honored to have this particular Torah and honor

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it with reading from it and learning from it as well. This particular Torah has a, a particular design on it and when tours and visitors come I may ask them, especially kids or students say,

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well, what do you see? So they might see a fan or a tree or other things. Uh But a particular clue that gives is here, this is a star, it's a yellow star and

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in particular, it evokes the stars that Jews had to wear, forced to wear during the holocaust by the Nazis that identified them as Jews. So these are in fact, train tracks and it's actually this

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design was actually based on a particular experience that I had when I was a student in Poland, when I was living and studying in Poland. These are tracks that come literally out of the ground that lead

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to from different communities all throughout Europe. And they converge into a single track which leads into Birkenau, which is the death camp aspect of Auschwitz in Poland . So when I was there, I had a

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chance to, to see it and to study it and to, and to be there. And I walked from Auschwitz to Birkenau and to see these tracks literally come out of the ground where people's homes are

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to this day uh was uh quite chilling and it leads directly into that place. So we read from this Torah as well and uh it's on permanent loan for us. There are only about 100 or so

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of these uh scrolls throughout the world. We received this uh particular scroll long before my time in the seventies based on some of the amazing work of our community members then. So this is the scroll,

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I wanna show you and uh uh this scroll, as I said, was commissioned for us. But before I show it to you, I wanna show you that every Torah is read by a reader.

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Uh uh using a Yad Y ad A Yad is uh to be used when you read because if you use your fingers or whatever, uh if you touch the, the Hebrew which is handwrit and handmade,

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the ink is handmade. It becomes a problem to try to fix it. I mean, you can do it but it's a lot. So, so we use the yacht and I'd love to have you

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hold on to that. Thank you for sure. And I noticed that are those yachts also on the Yes. So these an artist did all of these renderings as well as the panels on the ark.

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And this particular Torah has the various yards uh from different hands and just showing that everybody can come closer to Torah for sure. I happen to be left handed. So there are people who have given me

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over the years, a left handed yard as well . So that's, that's very nice. But I'm happy to show you and we can walk when you're ready. We'll walk over to where the, the

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central table is and we'll open it up. I do want to mention one last thing you're in a particular really wonderful spot because you're visiting right after our festival of Simchat. Torah when we actually moved and

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hand rolled the Torah from the end of Deuteronomy all the way to the beginning of Genesis. So it's actually sitting at Genesis, 11, the creation of the world. And that's what I wanna show you

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today. Thank you for. So we'll come up here to the central table. And one thing I wanted to tell you that when the Torahs are taken from the Ark on a Sabbath on a Shabbat morning

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, uh they're paraded around and people turn towards them and touch them and kiss just to acknowledge a sense of connection to the Torah and a deeper sense of tradition as well. So it's, it's here and

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perhaps uh the viewers will have a chance to see the layout of this congregation. So everybody is connected in a way it's not removed up in a place where people have to look up or it's a higher

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uh uh pulpit. But everything is intentionally done right in the center in the middle of things as well . Everything about the Torah is natural, the wood is natural, the parchment, you can touch that

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if you want to parchment is natural as well. And I'll show you this even the binding that holds it together because we're at the beginning. There we go. So the binding that holds it together,

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even the string is natural string. It's not synthetic at all. So there's, there's a real sense of intention in connecting with nature as well, which is a really important aspect for me also. So

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as I mentioned, we're all way way at the beginning. And as you know, to uh Hebrew is written right to left. So it starts here and it goes this way. So Genesis one and

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then these happen to be the days of creation. So that goes all the way to here. This is the seventh day of creation. So generally, so you can kind of see the paragraphs as it

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were. So there's a whole tradition of how to write a scroll. The ink is handmade. It's written with a quill and uh and it's, it's pretty great. So I'm happy to, it's not

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red, it's chanted and I'm happy to offer some of that. That would be OK. Should I step off? You know, my eyes are OK . But I think it would be, I'll try

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. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna come over this way and uh and people would have uh translations because not everybody knows Hebrew. So there'll be a Hebrew on one side and English on the other side.

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And uh there'll be people standing here just to make sure that if I do make a error, I should say when I make a mistake because that would happen, I will be gently corrected because the Hebrew

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has to be um because you're reading uh a, a very important document, but it's a connection that we have with our divine, with the divine source . So I'm gonna make sure we get it right

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. Just if you had an important message for me , I wanna get it correctly. Ha ha. He goes on. But in the beginning, I'm gonna translate it. You know, in the beginning

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, God created the heavens and the earth and the earth was Tohu Vou, which is uh it's a really important concept of just unformed. Some people think it means chaotic uh in the void is just unformed

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and darkness. I was on the face of the , to which is like the deep where there was a profound sense of not uh animate, there's not animation. Uh and the spirit of God uh sort

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of drew near on the face of the water and it kind of stirred up the water. So it's really, um you know, I didn't write it , but it's, it's a pretty dramatic to be

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able to have the opportunity to read from it. And any time we get to the beginning, which is really once a year, it's really fun because it's obviously a text that belongs to everybody. This

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is not specifically a Jewish story, but in the Jewish story, this is the creation of the world and it's awesome and lots of opportunity for anybody to read. And we go and usually on a given

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Shabbat, you see these columns, we usually read about three or four columns So, and I want to show you a couple more things if that's OK . So if you can take a look really closely

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, do you see these white lines that are scored into the parchment that's for the scribe to be able to write um straight lines when I was a kid , we used to learn penmanship and uh and this

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is pretty great penmanship. There's other things I want to draw your attention to different letters. And if you can see, do you see like the little crowns on these particular letters that is a particular font

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or Torus script? So anybody who writes the Torah will have their own handwriting, but everyone puts these little crowns uh on these certain letters. That's another tradition as well. And the ink, as I

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said is handmade. And so every scribe makes their own ink also. And it's uh it's pretty lovely and to be able to draw close to the Torah and learn the tradition and to participate in the tradition

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, which is open is really a great privilege. So I'm so happy to be able to show this to you and to uh to our viewers. Well , thank you so much. This is such a

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gift. Would you mind just reading even a couple of columns for us columns? We're gonna be here a while. I would love to hear it even