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Fundraising For Sefer Torah Completed

In November 2007, fundraising for the Sefer Torah in the memory of Rav Yitzchok Zilber zt"l was completed.

In November 2007, fundraising for the Sefer Torah in the memory of Rav Yitzchok Zilber zt"l was completed.

The writing of a Sefer Torah is a very rare mitzvah which is usually fulfilled by one or several people who donate funds in the memory of their close relatives. But with this Torah scroll, everything was different. A great number of Russian-speaking Jews were happy to participate in the mitzvah of writing a Sefer Torah in the memory of Rabbi Yitzchok Zilber.

Money was donated from anonymous individuals, from groups, and interestingly, 614 non-anonymous donors are registered in the Toldos Yeshurun office, i.e. people whom we know by name. 

It is interesting that this number is 1 more than the number of mitzvos in the Torah. The mitzvah of writing a Sefer Torah itself is the last mitzvah in the Torah.

Fundraising continued for over three years, it was begun in August of 2004, after the passing of Rabbi Yitzchok Zilber zt"l. It is no secret that many Russian-speaking religious people are not wealthy. Therefore, many people would "buy" one letter or one line. The smallest contribution was $1, the largest $3000.

The Sefer Torah was brought into the Toldos Yeshurun yeshivah on Chanukah 5766 (2 years ago), and is now used for Torah reading by the students of the yeshivah. The ceremony of Hachnassas Sefer Torah itself gathered many hundreds of participants and turned out to be a true celebration of Torah.

We would like to express our great gratitude to those who took part in writing this Torah scroll independently of the sum that you donated - for the most important thing is to fulfill the commandments of the Torah with a full heart and to help strengthen it and make it known among Russian-spekaing Jews.

Would you like to help? We need your help!

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