250-year-old Torah Donated to the Congregation at NewBridge in Dedham

Earlier this month, the Congregation at NewBridge on the Charles welcomed a new Torah as part of the observance of the Jewish holiday of Shavout, which celebrates the giving of the 10 Commandments and the Torah on Mount Sinai.

The 250-year-old Torah scroll, which had been in use in a synagogue in the Czech Republic and was hidden during the Holocaust, has been restored. It was a gift from Sheila Pallay, a photographer originally from Sharon, and her husband Herb, in honor of her upcoming 80th birthday.

Pallay, along with Judith Weinberg, a retired special ed teacher from Needham now aquilter and fabric artist, and Marlene Yesley, a retired teacher from Newton now a painter and designer, got together to design as create the new Torah cover, which coordinates with the fabric used in congregation's ark.

The three artists all met at NewBridge on the Charles, a senior living community inDedham that's run by Hebrew SeniorLife, where Pallay and Weinberg and their husbands moved to in September and December 2021, respectively, and where Yesley has lived in since 2018. The process of working closely on all the details and logistics of bringing the new Torah to NewBridge and designing the Torah cover, which is traditional for Torahs, led Rabbi Judi Ehrlich to dub them the "Torah Sisters."

According to Yesley, she had long wanted to create a work of religious art but hadn't found an appropriate opportunity. The same was true of Weinberg. They consulted with Beverly Sky, a Boston-based artist and weaver who was born in a displaced person's camp after World War II, because Sky had designed "the Ark" that holds the congregation's other Torah. With a color scheme using fall colors, and an inscription in Hebrew quoting a Jewish prayer, "from generation to generation, "the cover honors this scroll's 250 years, originally from a synagogue from Přeštice -- coincidentally, a Czech city that Pallay had visited and photographed.

Before the pandemic, Pallay spent more than three months photographing what remained of the Jewish community in the Czech Republic, eventually publishing a book, "Light Beyond the Shadows: The Legacy of the Czech Torah Scrolls and the Renewal of Jewish Life in Czechia." She followed that up by photographing Rabbi Kevin Hale, a scribe in Northampton, MA, as he restored a Czech Torah, one of 1,564sacred scrolls that had survived the Holocaust and in 1964 were sent to London where the ones in good shape were distributed to synagogues around the world. So when Pallay's husband, Herb, asked how she'd like to celebrate her 80thbirthday, she asked to present a Czech Torah to the Congregation at NewBridge, as a way to bring new life to a Torah scroll.
The experience inspired the "Torah Sisters" in unexpected ways.

"From the moment, I saw a quilted Torah cover, I knew I wanted to make one but never thought I'd have the opportunity," Weinberg said. "It's one of the most profound experiences in my life to part of this effort."

"The entire experience was very spiritual for me," Pallay said. "It really started when I was doing a portfolio project in photography at RISD and took photos of Rabbi Hale as he restored another Czech Torah, which led my husband and me to want to photograph what remains of Jewish culture in the Czech Republic, and led me to Přeštice, the city where this Torah was first used. This has been an incredible experience."