Volume 6, Issue 10 / Tishrei, 5764 / October 2003
"I Brought the Torah Scrolls with Me From Syria!"
Residents of Israel are accustomed to the joyous celebrations that take place on Simhat Torah, as the Torahs are removed from the ark and gala processions of worshippers parade joyfully through the streets with the holy scrolls. Reuven Shimon, a resident of Jerusalem's Katamon neighborhood, will celebrate the holiday with his family in his local synagogue, grateful for the opportunity to publicly dance with the scrolls. And hundreds of other Jews will march with the four Torah scrolls Reuven smuggled out of Syria, in an episode of extraordinary courage, daring, and faith.
The story began when Syrian president Assad announced, in the spring of 1992, that his country's Jews would be permitted to emigrate to the United States. Like most of the Jews in his community, Reuven Shimon, a young father of six from Aleppo, requested permission for his family to emigrate. After six months of anxious waiting, the application was approved - for Reuven and three children. When three months of frustrating negotiations with the Ministry of the Interior proved futile, Reuven presented the clerk with a gold bracelet. The next day, the entire family received permission to emigrate.
But Reuven was troubled: "My father had told me to go only to Eretz Yisrael, to Jerusalem." A plan began to take shape in his mind.
He went to the embassy of Turkey, requesting a visa to that country. "You are only permitted to go to the United States," the clerk declared. He asked to see the ambassador, in whom he confided: "I have a brother who left for Turkey 35 years ago. He married a Turkish woman and I very much want to find him." The ambassador reluctantly granted him a visa, warning: "You're the first and last Jew I'm giving a visa to."
Reuven went to pray in his synagogue, whose days of glory had long since passed, as the Jewish community dwindled. He looked at the magnificent Torah scrolls, each around 140 years old and worth a small fortune. "I want to take one to Israel," he thought. He came back that night and, with the silent assent of the haham, removed a scroll from the ark. He first rubbed a wax candle over a few letters to render the Torah "blemished," since, according to Jewish law, a Torah scroll may be moved from one place to another only with a minyan, a quorum of ten men.
He tossed and turned the whole night. "God will help me," he thought. The next night he went back and went through the same process again, removing another Torah scroll. And the next. And the next. In four nights, he had taken four Torah scrolls home with him. He packed each Torah, swathed in new clothing he purchased, in a suitcase.
With a total of 12 suitcases, Reuven, his wife, and six children boarded buses for Istanbul, leaving the country that their families had lived in for hundreds of years. When the buses reached the Syrian-Turkish border, the guard eyed Reuven suspiciously. Spurning his entreaties and proffered bribe, he insisted, "Open up all the suitcases. "I began to tremble," Reuven recalls. One by one, the guard opened up each suitcase and searched it thoroughly. In those suitcases in which the Torah scrolls were concealed he did a perfunctory inspection. "Blessed be He who revives the dead," Reuven said silently. He gladly gave the guard the bribe money he now demanded.
After a 35-hour bus ride, they arrived in Istanbul. It was already late at night, but as soon as he had settled his family in the hotel, Reuven took a cab to the Israeli consulate. "I used to see the Israeli flag being burned and/or trampled on on Syrian TV," he recalls. "For the first time in my life, I saw an intact Israeli flag. I just stood there for 15 minutes and looked at it."
He entered the building, and proceeded to the consular offices, but everything was dark and shut. However, he didn't realize that someone was watching him. Suddenly a small window opened, and a voice demanded, "Who are you?"
"I'm a Jew and I just arrived from Syria," he responded. The astonished consul came out and asked him to recite a prayer. He recited Shma Yisrael, but, still suspicious, the ambassador asked him to say another prayer. "Elokai neshama sheyatzarta bi tehora hi" (My G-d, the soul that you have created in me is pure), Reuven responded. Only after he identified the mezuza, was the ambassador satisfied and invited him inside. Reuven relayed the story of his miraculous escape and told him he had relatives in Kiryat Atta. He said he wanted to go to Jerusalem. The consul gave him some money and told him to go back to the hotel.
The consul contacted him shortly thereafter and advised him that arrangements had been made to go to Kiryat Atta. Reuven was adamant: "Only Jerusalem."
After several days of standoff, one of Reuven's relatives in Israel contacted a staff member at the Jewish Agency. He called Yona Betzaleli, head of the Jewish Agency's Workers Union, and told him about the family's plight. The moment Yona heard the story, he made arrangements for the family of Syrian Jews to be received at the absorption center operated by the Jewish Agency in Mevasseret Zion, on the outskirts of Jerusalem.
At Ben Gurion airport, Reuven was approached by a stranger, who had heard of his daring rescue of the Torah scrolls. "I want to buy them, " he said, handing Reuven a signed blank check. Name your price."
"I won't take money for the Torahs," Reuven responded. "They belong to God. If I sell them to you, he can take the money back in an instant. If He wants to give me a fortune, He will."
After the initial stages of absorption, Reuven began to worry. A watchmaker by training, his professional skills were useless in an age of $10 watches. Once again salvation came from Yona Betzaleli. "When I was in still in Turkey I heard from my relatives that Yona looks after new immigrants. Although I didn't know him, I called him, and he found a job for me as a cook at the Jewish Agency's Kiryat Moriah campus. God sent him to me like an angel from heaven."
With assistance from the Jewish Agency, Reuven was able to purchase an apartment and set up home in Jerusalem. His eldest son hopes to start law school, and the next two are studying to be dayanim, religious court judges. His younger children are still in school.
The Torah scrolls also found new homes in Israel. Reuven donated them to the head of the Syrian community in Israel, Haham Edmond Cohen, who distributed them to several synagogues in Bnei Brak and Jerusalem.
Credits: Text by Shifra Paiken / Photo by Shimi Nachtailer
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