Handwritten Torah Donated to School

The students and officials of Valley Torah High School in North Hollywood did not mind getting a little wet Sunday.

That’s because a new Sefer Torah, a handwritten scroll containing the first five books of Hebrew scriptures, was being delivered to their school.

A crowd of 150 students, parents and members of the local Jewish community gathered at the rain-soaked corner of Ben Avenue and Huston Street to await the arrival of the new Torah, donated by the Istrin family of North Hollywood.

Morris Istrin, the 67-year-old patriarch who commissioned a scribe in Israel to write the Torah, greeted the crowd with scroll in hand under a canopy used in Jewish marriage ceremonies.

“In this case, it means we’re being married to the laws of the Torah and to God,” said Rabbi Leo Striks, the school’s director of development.

School officials danced in circles and sang Hebrew songs as they led the procession including Istrin, four canopy bearers, children holding torches and guests back to the school.

Earlier in the morning at Shaarey Zedek Congregation, a few blocks north of the school, the finishing touches to the Sefer Torah were completed by a local scribe, Rabbi Shimon Kraft.

The final letters were written by Istrin, completing a process that took about 2,000 hours to write, Kraft said.

Although the school has two copies of the Torah, one 70 years old and another dating from the 19th century, school officials said time has rendered some of the letters in them illegible.

“The Istrin family has been so kind to donate this Torah for the school,” said Cary Samuels, president of the board of directors.

“Every time a child reads from the Torah, the memory of the Istrin family will live on.”