By COLlive reporter
Photos: Menachem Cohen/COLlive
A day after the Unity Torah was destroyed by floodwaters during Hurricane Ida, the originators of the project gathered with donors and friends to begin the writing of a new Sefer Torah.
The Unity Sefer Torah, the second Torah spearheaded by friends and businessmen Rabbi Beryl Junik, Rabbi Shloimy Greenwald and R’ Zalmy Cohen, was written during the pandemic in honor of Hatzalah volunteers around the world.
The Torah had been gifted to Hatzalah, and was housed in a Shul in Williamsburg where many Hatzalah volunteers daven regularly.
During the unprecedented storms this week, the basement Shul became completely flooded, and four Sefer Torahs were damaged beyond repair.
Undeterred in their mission to bring unity, light, and goodness into this world, this morning, the three friends gathered with Sofer Rabbi Moshe Klein and called upon friends and donors to join as they immediately began the writing of a new Torah scroll.
“We will write another Torah,” Rabbi Shloimy Greenwald told COLlive.com, who immediately pledged to write another Torah in honor of his birthday today. It will be completed sometime during the upcoming year, he said.
“This happening before Rosh Hashana shows me that Hashem wants us to unite Klal Yisroel even more,” he said. “As the Rebbe once wrote to someone in Jerusalem whose Shul’s Torah had been destroyed, the Rebbe instructed him to begin writing a new Torah immediately, on the day of the Levaya of the first one.”
During the writing, Rabbi Beryl Junik said the loss of the precious Torah is a “wake up call to all of us.”
“We recently saw many terrible tragedies – in Miron, Karlin and Surfside,” Beryl Junik said. “This is a wake-up call to us that we need to continue the Achdus in Klal Yisroel. It is not a time to rest, but to continue the mission to unite every Jewish person in the writing of a Torah,” he said.
To take part in the third unity Torah, visit UnitedforProtection.com.
