L'dor V'dor...Writing Torah, by Jane Drucker

My father's cousin Bella had two children and three husbands. Of all these people, I only remember Bella and husband #3...Uncle Maurice. The others had perished before my memory begins.

The Nazis deported Bella and her family from Germany to Rzeszow, Poland in 1938. Shortly after their relocation, Bella and her family found themselves in grave danger.

Bella decided to stay in the city for work, but she sent her eight year old daughter with her brother and her five year old son with her first husband, the children's father, to safety in the Hungarian countryside. All four of them were rounded up and murdered enroute.

Only Bella survived, taking on the identity of a Polish Christian woman and working as a maid for a Nazi family for the duration of the war in Europe.

After the war, she made her way to NY where she outlived her second husband; married for a third time, and eventually moved to Florida, where she lived until her death five years ago.

Bella never had any other children, but I owe my life to her. It was Bella who, while still in Nazi-occupied Poland, arranged for my grandmother and my father to escape from Berlin to NY in 1941. Without her, I would likely never have been born.

When the Torah Project was first announced, I knew I would participate. But one thing led to another, I was distracted, and I procrastinated.

One day, I heard that our scribe, Neil Yerman, would be coming to Kol Ami for ONE LAST TIME.

Oy, I thought, it's now or never. I made it now. I called the temple office to arrange for an appointment.

By the time I called, Lee had only one date left to offer me...June 6th. Bella's birthday. And so, it came to be that my writing in our Torah would be dedicated to Bella's memory.

Leesa and I arrived here on the afternoon of June 6th. When we sat down with Neil, he asked me some questions, listened intently to my answers...my story of feeling guided here for that special, life changing moment, by Aunt Bella.

Neil nodded, and he directed my attention to the parchment that would soon hold "my" letter. The next letter to be scribed was...a "bet"...the Hebrew equivalent of a "b", "B" for Bella.

L'dor, v'dor...from generation to generation...I dedicated my letter, my "bet", to Aunt Bella. I felt that in this small act, I became the vehicle to pass Jewish law and history and wisdom from Aunt Bella through me, to the children of our congregation.

Uncle Maurice, Bella's 3rd husband, was well renowned in our family for one oft-repeated philosophy, "There's a time for everything, and everything in its time." Whenever we read from our new Torah, I will think of the time that I helped to scribe our sacred words, and I'll remember Bella and all the generations that came before me. And I will dream of all the generations who will inherit Torah from us.

Posted by Lee at October 12, 2004 11:45 AM