The Drama of a Falling Torah

October 18, 2006 - 4:45 PM by

A holy Torah scroll must never, ever touch the floor. Usually, there is little danger of such a catastrophe unfolding. But the risk increases during the recently celebrated festival of Simchat Torah, when the scroll is unrolled, displayed, rolled up, and danced around with — getting more of a workout than usually.

Disaster was afoot at Jameel’s synagogue (shul), and he describes the action with the precision of a sports announcer doing a play-by-play. It all began when the Torah was unrolled for the “display and celebrate” portion of the service, called “hagba’ah.”

hagba2.jpg

In slow motion, the shul watched as the left hand side of the Torah started to unroll, more and more, making this one of the widest hagba’ot every witnessed. The Torah scroll now started to sink and fall towards the floor.

Frozen in shock, the scene unfolded as no one in the shul could move; everyone was watching in horror, realizing that they may have to skip their lunch on Simchat Torah, and 30 more as well, as there is a month-long mandated fast for a “fallen Torah.”

Two people reacted — one of the largest people in shul moved faster than a speeding bullet. Coming out of left-field, this very large person scrambled with the gait of a gazelle, the grace of a figure skater, and the brute force of a Dallas Quarterback — as he hurtled over the heads of people toward the bimah (front of the synagogue.)

With only milliseconds to spare, this holy man, crashed through throngs of people at the bimah and grabbed the top handle of the Torah — sheer milimeters before it hit the ground.

The slow-motion crescendos of “Noooooooooooooooooooo!!!” (say that slowly in your mind to get the full effect) that was the background to the seemingly slow-motion charge of the person running to catch the falling Torah, quickly switched back to real-time (Tivo users can use the “catch up to live” metaphor) — and the shul erupted into a roaring cheer, congratulating “the man” who had saved the day!

Yet one other person reacted even faster than the “man” who saved the day — an even larger individual who ran like the devil out the door of the shul. Jumping Jack Flash — this guy was out in a split second — so that he wouldn’t be present at the “falling of a Sefer Torah”… and therefore, wouldn’t have to fast.

I kid you not — this story took place in our shul, and 3 different individuals insisted that I blog it for posterity.

And to “the man” — the community is in your debt.

Tags: • Category: Holidays 

Comments

One Comment on The Drama of a Falling Torah

  1. BrooklynHabiru on Mon, Jul 16th 2007 8:16 PM

    2. Holy schnitzle! Thats an amazing story… I bet the guy who was responsible for the fall felt pretty terrible afterwards. I hope he didn’t catch too much flack for it.

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