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Torah’s Story Up for Debate

No, not the one written inside

by
Hadara Graubart
April 15, 2010
The Central Synagogue no longer thought to be rescued from Aushwitz.(NYTimes.com)
The Central Synagogue no longer thought to be rescued from Aushwitz.(NYTimes.com)

While every Torah may be a sacred document, when it comes to provenance, a scroll that survived the Holocaust is the holy grail, so to speak. The Central Synagogue in Manhattan has been home to one such doubly anointed artifact since 2008—or so it thinks. The New York Times has traced the origins of the Torah, said to have been rescued from Auschwitz by a priest and found 60 years later by an industrious rabbi with a metal detector. After investigation, David M. Rubenstein, the billionaire who donated it, said that “we cannot fully and unquestionably establish that the Torah is what I had been led to believe.” By those standards, one might argue that no holy book has a perfect pedigree. In the meantime, the folks at the prestigious NYC shul can rest easy—Rubenstein has donated another Holocaust Torah the origins of which are not in question.

Hadara Graubart was formerly a writer and editor for Tablet Magazine.