Two Thousand Sifrei Torah
עִמּוֹ אָנֹכִי בְצָרָה
"I am with him in distress." — Tehillim 91
Two Thousand Sifrei Torah
The massacre of October 7 fell on Simchas Torah — the day we hold the Torah closest. Our answer is taken from the day itself: a goal of two thousand Sifrei Torah restored, l'iluy nishmas the kedoshim, and returned to communities that will read from them, learn from them, and dance with them. Each restoration binds people together — a shul with the individuals who carry it, a community with a community it has never met, a generation with the generations before it. The work will close with a single Hachnosas Sefer Torah of American Jewry, walked together.
לְעִלּוּי נִשְׁמוֹת הַקְּדוֹשִׁים
For every soul taken that day — men, women, and children, and those who fell defending them.
Hashem says of each of us: I am with him in his distress. This is how we say it to one another. No sefer here is restored by one hand — every scroll is carried by many: the shul that will house it, the families who give toward it, the community across the country that joins them. Generation to generation, community to community, until no one mourns alone.
שַׁאֲלִי שְׂרוּפָה בָּאֵשׁ לִשְׁלוֹם אֲבֵלָיִךְ
"Ask, O you who were burned in fire, after the welfare of those who mourn you."
Rav Meir of Rothenburg wrote that line after wagonloads of the Talmud were burned in the streets of Paris. We have said it every Tisha B'Av for nearly eight hundred years — a question sent into the fire, and the fire has never answered. This is the answer. To every sefer taken by fire, from Paris to Simchas Torah 5784: your mourners are here, and they are writing you back.
The day the last sefer comes home
When the work is complete, the sefarim will be walked in together — one Hachnosas Sefer Torah of American Jewry. Put your name on the roll and we will tell you the date. Every community, every kind of Jew, standing in one place. That is the point.