Eerily reminiscent of an episode from Law and Order but without the murder.
One Torah, said to have been in Auschwitz, has been in the ark at one of New York’s most prominent synagogues since 2008. A second Torah joined it on Monday night, as the synagogue, Central Synagogue in Manhattan, observed Holocaust Remembrance Week.
It has a back story — one that the rabbi, Peter J. Rubinstein, hopes will prove less problematic than the first one’s, which, it turns out, may not be entirely believable.
The Law and Order plot (Season 16, “Bible Story”) involves “the murder of a man found desecrating a Torah outside of a synagogue is tied to the feud between a devout Jewish business owner and his more secular cousin”. There’s a further discussion of the plot and Judaism here.
Under oath, Rabbi Geller (Allan Miller) admitted that he and Speicher’s father actually purchased the Chumash in a used book store after failing to locate the hidden one during their trip to Poland Astonished, prosecutor Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston) demanded to know why they would fabricate the story that it was the real hidden Chumash?
“How do I explain this to you, Mr. McCoy?,” Rabbi Geller responded. “The Bible is full of stories that may be apocryphal. Do we believe that Methuselah lived 900 years or that Moses parted the Red Sea? Their truth is in the inspiration that we gather from them. And this particular book inspired a lot of people. Even if it isn’t the same book, it is a symbol of our survival. I don’t see what’s wrong with that.”
Oy.