Harlem to Welcome New Torah

By Dovid Margolin – Chabad.org

It’s been almost 75 years since New York City’s Harlem neighborhood has witnessed the festivities that accompany the completion of a new Torah scroll. Yet come this Sunday, Oct. 27, Chabad of Harlem will be doing just that—completing a Torah scroll in memory of Rabbi Tzvi Hirsh Gansbourg, joined by scores of friends, supporters and well-wishers.

“The Torah was sponsored in memory of my grandfather by his wife, Hensha,” explains Rabbi Yossel Gansbourg, the current director of Chabad of Harlem. “People in the community have stepped forward to contribute as well, and we will be completing the Torah on Sunday, which will be his seventh yahrtzeit.”

The festivities will begin at 9:30 a.m. at the Harlem Jewish Center, Chabad of Harlem at 437 Manhattan Ave., at the corner of 118th Street, with a scribe completing the writing of the Torah scroll, followed by a processional and parade beginning at 10:30 a.m. on 119th Street. A seudot mitzvah celebratory banquet will be held at 11:30 a.m. at the PAL building adjacent to Chabad at 441 Manhattan Ave.

Chabad in Harlem was founded in 2005 by Tzvi Hirsh’s son and Yossel’s father, Rabbi Shaya Gansbourg, who, after fortuitously stumbling into the neighborhood and realizing that it was a changing one—demographically and economically—saw the need for a Jewish center there. The Chabad center quickly filled an unmistakable void in the burgeoning Jewish community of Harlem, becoming a second home and synagogue to the many young Jews who had recently begun moving to the neighborhood.

In 2011, Shaya began the process of writing a Torah scroll in memory of his father, known widely as Hirsh, a Russian émigré who had been born and raised in a Chassidic household in Moscow. He fled with his family to British Mandate Palestine in 1937 before ultimately arriving in New York in 1947 as a 19-year-old yeshivah student.

Hirsh became a businessman and a well-known Jewish activist in New York. One of the founders of the Lubavitch Youth Organization, he was also involved in printing the talks of the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory. Hirsh passed away in 2006.

Shaya was a businessman in the publishing industry when he founded Chabad of Harlem at the age of 50, and together with his wife, Goldie, directed the growing center until his untimely passing in February, at 57. Just a month earlier, Yossel and his wife, Mushka, moved to Harlem to continue Shaya’s work there.

Doug Garfield, 54, has lived in Harlem for the last seven years. Two years ago, he happened upon Chabad of Harlem’s High Holiday services and has since become a regular attendee.

Garfield says that while he can sometimes feel intimidated in a synagogue, “Chabad has made me feel nothing but warm and welcome.” He has never participated in the completion of a Torah scroll before, and he’s curious to see what the celebration will bring.

“I bought some verses in memory of my late father and brother, and as I understand, I’ll be helping the scribe fill in the letters in the Torah,” says Garfield. “I’m really looking forward to it.”

“This will be a community-wide event, and it’s a special moment for Harlem’s Jewish community,” adds Rabbi Yossel Gansbourg. “Not long ago, parading with a Torah down the main streets of Harlem would have been unthinkable. This Sunday, we will be dancing proudly there.”