San Diego (special) --As Torahs go, it is not physically impressive. Its mantle is simple. But when Rabbi Erwin Herman told the story of the "Yanov Torah" to 500 people at San Diego's community Yom HaShoah services last Sunday, he caused many of them to cry.

The Reform rabbi told of being brought the Torah in 1979 by a Russian doctor who recently had immigrated to Los Angeles and was down on his luck. The doctor, who at the time was reduced to supporting his family as a hospital orderly, wanted to sell the Torah to put food on his table. When Herman rolled out the Torah scroll, he could see that it was not a "kosher" Torah. It did not meet the exacting standards that had enabled the Five Books of Moses to be passed down without change over the millenia. Instead, it was a patchwork Torah--a piece in one script here; another script there; in some places torn, and in other places covered with centuries of "schmutz" -- dirt. No, this Torah was not fit for use in a synagogue. But as the Russian doctor--whom Herman gave the alias of Dr. Orlove- told the story of how the patchwork relic had come into being, the rabbi's heart softened. Raised in a secular family under the communist regime, the doctor had known little of his Jewish background--except that his official identification card described him as being of Jewish nationality. Made all too aware of his difference by other Soviet citizens, the doctor decided to emigrate from the Soviet Union. After he got permission to go, he called his grandfather to say goodbye. The

RABBI AND TORAH--Rabbi Erwin Herman holds the  Yanov Torah, suject of a  moving speech he later  delivered at San Diego's  community Yom HaShoah services.

grandfather hurried from Moscow to L'vov (also known as Lublin) to visit him and bid him goodbye.

The grandfather asked the young man to accompany him to the home of an old friend, a man whom they discovered lying in such frail condition on his bed that for a moment they thought he was dead. But the living skeleton rallied to the sound of their voices. After visiting his friend for a while, the grandfather announced the real purpose of his visit. He told the friend his grandson was going to America, and that as the friend always had been religious, he wanted him to bestow a blessing on his grandson.

The old man arose from his bed, and went into another room, where he remained for a long time. When he came out, he was carrying a Torah, seemingly almost as heavy as he. The Torah, he said, was not just any Torah; it was the Yanov Torah.

Yanov, he explained, was a work camp where the Jews of L'vov were taken by the nazis during the early years of the Holocaust. It was not a death camp, per se, although many people died there. But not by poison gas sprayed into crowded shower rooms; they died from starvation and beatings. There was a chance at such a camp one could live.

Not all the Jews of L'vov had been herded into the camp; some initially had remained in the town, and occasionally would come to the fenced-off camp with packages that they entreated the guards to give to the prisoners. They were not so naive as to think that the guards would do so without taking the majority shares of the packages, but perhaps, the L'vovers hoped, something would go to their relatives behind the fences of the camp.

Perhaps the guards grew addicted to the presents inside the packages, Rabbi Herman speculated. Perhaps that was the reason behind the "miracle" of Yanov; when, completely uncharacteristically during the Holocaust, six prisoners were allowed to go home to L'vov on a short pass, provided they bring back "goodies: with them. Such treats as the prisoners returned with enlarged the guards' appetite. Next, they allowed 12 prisoners to visit home on a short pass.

On this trip, Herman said, the prisoners told the Jews of L'vov that they were starved, fatigued to the point of exhaustion, and sick with illness. But all such maladies, they said, they could survive. What they really needed was a Torah--so that they could sustain themselves with God's teachings.

The elders of L'vov trembled with fear at the idea: the inmates would be caught with the Torah, and would be punished , perhaps even killed. They told them bringing a Torah into the camp was sheer folly. Thereupon, one of the men, whom Herman called "Moshe the Tailor," offered another plan. Go to the cemetery, he suggested, where damaged Holy Books have been buried, and restore them to the service of learning by using a page, or a panel of scroll, at a time.

The suggestion was followed, and the parchments wound around the bodies of the returning prisoners. Once safely in their barracks, the prisoners hid the parchments under floorboards, in mattresses, and inside pipes. A page at a time would be extracted, and in that way Torah and Jewish learning were kept alive in Yanov. Only on one other occasion was another party of 12 inmates allowed to return to L'vov, and they too brought into the camp more learning secreted around their bodies. 

And so Torah learning was sustained until the camp was liberated by the Russian Army, Herman related.

After the war, an unidentified inmate went back to Yanov, and assembled the hidden parchments. They were stitched together, and when certain sections proved to be duplicates, the Hebrew letters were removed to make room for sections of Torah that were missing from the scroll. 
In such a way was a Torah reconstructed from the Holy Writings and in such a way did a Torah give silent testimony to the suffering of the Jewish people during the Holocaust. 

Brought back to L'vov, the Torah was placed in the keeping of the survivors of Yanov who had returned to their city. One by one they died, until the old man became the last of the Survivors. Into the arms of the young doctor, a secular Jew, he bequeathed the relic.

Moved by the story, Herman wrote a check to help the doctor tide over his family, but he did not buy the Torah. Herman believed that such a Torah was worth far more than $250 or any other amount he could finance from his "Rabbi's Discretionary Fund," even though the doctor was willing to accept as little as $250 for it.

Herman said he told the story of the Torah the next day to a wealthy member of his North Hollywood congregation, who returned several hours later with a large check and this letter to the rabbi:

"Dear Rabbi, we have purchased this Torah for you," the letter said. "It must not be given to a museum for that would limit its purpose. We ask you to carry it from temple to temple, from place to place, from synagogue to synagogue, wherever you travel in this world.

"Tell its story to Jews and non-Jews alike; let it be understood by all that although millions of Jews have been murdered,.our Torah will live forever. The Yanov Torah testifies to that truth."

Herman said that he has followed that instruction faithfully. Although the Torah is not "kosher," he said, "it is kedosha (sacred)!"

"I want you to look at that Torah, and then, you must make me a promise," Herman told the outdoor assembly at the Lawrence Family JCC. "I want you to touch it. I want you to feel what I feel every time I am in the company of the Yanov Torah."

After the services, crowds gathered around the worn, torn Torah. Among them was one Survivor who told Herman he had spent two days in Yanov while being transferred from one camp to another. He had not known the inmates from L'vov who made the Torah.

Herman told HERITAGE that Hebrew Union College has made him a pledge that, after he is too tired to take the Torah from synagogue to synagogue, it will assign rabbinical students to take his place so that the story of the Yanov Torah will continue to be told.

The rabbi, who now lives in San Diego County, keynoted the Yom HaShoah observance at which Mayor Susan Golding made brief remarks, and co chairwoman Sonia Ancoli Israel, a child of Survivors, movingly described a visit to Vilna, Lithuania, the city where her parents and other Jews had thrived before the Holocaust.

The solemn observance also included the presentation of colors by a United States Navy Color Guard; the singing of "The Star Spangled Banner" by Cantor Alisa Pomerantz-Boro of Tifereth israel Synagogue, and "HaTikvah" by all the youth present; the singing of two Holocaust songs by the Tifereth Israel Youth Choir; a presentation of a scene from Anne Frank by J*Company actors Julie Glazer and Benjamin Caspi; comments from Gussie and Mike Zaks of the New Life Club of Holocaust Survivors, and a traditional candle-lighting ceremony remembering the six million Jews and five million Christians who perished in the Holocaust.

Called up to light candles were survivors from various concentration camps and ghettoes, including Lola & Abe Sonabend, Betty & Isidor Horne, Sally & Norman Sheinok, Rose & Max Schindler, Zita & Morris Liebermensch, and Esther Ancoli-Barbasch. Avi Fisdel lit a candle for the 1.5 million children slain in the Holocaust, and Rev. Glenn Allison lit a candle memorializing the 5 million Christian victims.

A short service followed with representatives of the Reform, Conservative and Orthodox clergy participating. Among these were Rabbi Lisa Goldstein of Hillel of San Diego, Rabbi Jonathan Stein of Congregation Beth Israel, Rabbi Moishe Leider of Chabad of La Jolla and Cantor Bernard Pollack who delivered a haunting rendition of the traditional memorial prayer, "El Moleh Rachamim."