Paul Bass Photos
There was dancing in the streets of Beaver Hills as New Haven’s growing Hasidic community celebrated the completion of a new Torah scroll.
The celebration took place Sunday. It began in the home of Shmuel Aizenberg, who emigrated to New Haven from Rehovoth, Israel, in 2011 and has built a successful real estate business here.
Aizenberg was the largest of 40 donors to the $70,000 project to bring a new Torah scroll (pictured) to the community and then throw a party on Norton Parkway in the Beaver Hills neighborhood. The neighborhood population of families associated with the Lubavitcher sect of Orthodox Hasidic Judaism has exploded from about 15 families to an estimated 100 and counting in recent years.
The Lubavitch have run a post-high school yeshiva out of a Norton Parkway home for over 40 years. Now, thanks to the influx of families, they have purchased the former Young Israel synagogue on Norton to serve as a main shul; and the former St. Brendan Church complex on Whalley to house a second, high school yeshiva and upcoming banquet hall. Ten more families are expected to move in soon to attend a kollel, or one-year learning program for newly ordained rabbis. The group has its eyes on obtaining the former Gan School building on the other side of Whalley. Up to four Lubavitch minyamim, or prayer services, now take place in the neighborhood on the Sabbath. One of them takes place at the “Schlounge,” a gathering of young adults looking for an alternative space. The new Torah scroll is for that gathering, which has been borrowing a scroll from the main Congregation Chabad Lubavtich (inside the former Young Israel).
“We are growing, barukh hashem [bless God]!”, Aizenberg declared as he distributed shots of wine and Glenfiddich single-malt scotch whiskey for celebratory l’chaim (to life!) toasts.
He showed Mendy Edelkopf (in photo) the crown ordered from Israel for the new Torah scroll.
This Torah covering was also ordered from Israel, from a fabric company called Flocktex started in the 1970s by members of the Deitsch/Sandman family, anchors of New Haven’s Lubavitch community.
For two hours, a crowd filled Aizenberg’s home and noshed on fruit as a series of men (including Rabbi Berl Levitin, pictured at the top of the story) took turns having a letter filled in for the last two lines of the Torah, or first five Books of Moses, in order to “complete” the scroll. Aizenberg (in above photo) had the final turn, filling the lamed, the last letter of the last word, yisrael, or Israel.
Then Aizenberg performed the hagbah, lifting the scroll and unfurling it so everyone could see six columns of text.
The chanting crowd spilled out of the house …
… and onto Norton Parkway, to accompany the Torah to the Congergation Chabad Lubavitch synagogue three blocks away.
Leading the procession, on a flatbed truck, the three-piece Moshe Band from Brooklyn filled the air with raucous minor-key Hasidic melodies, updated with screeching wah-wah-pedalled Jimi Hendrix-style leads.
A contingent of Satmar Hasidim (a different Hasidic sect) came down from Waterbury to join the celebration. They’re pictured above in the foreground dancing in the procession.
Paul Bass Photos
The procession ended in front of the synagogue, where members carried out the congregation’s existing Torah scrolls to join the newest scroll in joyous circle dances known as hakafot, which Jews annually perform on the Simchat Torah holiday as well. Then everyone went inside for a celebratory feast — one of many to come for a community on the rise.
Shalom!!