‘A golden bell and a pomegranate… all around the hem of the mantle.’
Exodus 28:34
The ark is opened, the curtain, or parochet, is drawn, and a Sefer Torah taken out. It is the central rite of the Shabbat morning service, and liturgy, spoken and sung, accompany the act. This week, with Parashat T’tzavveh, not only are aspects of the Temple service performed as usual, but the costume of the High Priest, Aaron, is reflected in the cover and accoutrements of the scroll itself. Mention of the pomegranates, bells and mantle (me’il) in the verse above are a clear indication of the fact; as is the embroidered headdress and the silver breastplate. Even the sash that holds the scroll could have circled Aaron’s waist (minus the velcro). It is as if the High Priest takes centre stage, or even walks among us, bells a-jingling, for those congregations who go as far as to [wait for it] process the Torah!
Besides a reminder of the long-distant, or even imagined, past, there are associations much closer to home, and to our hearts, perhaps. We have four Sifrei Torah at the South London Liberal Synagogue. One is a Czech scroll from Kolin, circa 1900, in regular use, including at bar and bat mitzvah services. There really is a sense of keeping something of a lost/destroyed community alive to read from it. Another belonged to Rabbi Bruno Italiener, small enough, one presumes, to be smuggled out when he escaped Austria immediately before the outbreak of war, serving first at the St. George’s Settlement in Stepney (where my mother attended art classes). The provenance of our other two scrolls seems to have been lost, although not that of their mantles. One memorialises two members’ families that perished in the Shoah. The other was made to mark the birth of a son: that of our former rabbi, the late Neil Kraft and his wife. A hand-sewn label inside has the details, although few would know it is there.
When we open our ark, it is as if we were opening a door to old friends. Not quite the awe and wonder of Temple ritual, or even the gasp that invariably goes up from a class of schoolchildren on an educational visit. Nevertheless, there is love and affection and connection imbued in those objects. Some of the very things the Torah and our Judaism is meant to inculcate in us.