Temple Isaiah Rabbi Mark Panoff shows off the 400-year-old Torah found in Iraq. The Torah, made from gazelle skin, is stored in a wooden case called a tik, a tradition in Sephardic Jewish communities.

In the battle-torn Iraqi city of Mosul, with heavy fighting all around, members of the Army's 82nd Airborne unit ducked into an abandoned building during a lull in fighting in March 2007.

Looking around at what soldiers thought was a dump, they spotted Hebrew letters on the walls of the building. A high-ranking officer nearby, who happened to be a rabbi, said they appeared to be in a synagogue.

As they kept looking, the soldiers found something hidden below the floor. Wrapped in tissue-like paper was a Torah scroll, dating back 400 years, that had apparently been left behind by the congregation.

Now, seven months later, that 400-year-old Torah has found a home at Temple Isaiah, in Fulton.

Torah travels to Fulton

The Army knew whom to call: Rabbi Menachem Youlus, the scribe-turned-Torah-rescuer who runs the Washington, D.C.-based Save A Torah foundation.

Scouring the globe for scrolls that were hidden, lost or stolen, he has restored 572 Torahs and re-settled them in more than 50 Jewish communities worldwide.

This Torah was in very bad shape, he said, with deteriorated writing and holes in the parchment caused by insects and mice. Nevertheless, he saw its potential.

"To the naked eye, you would say it was in terrible shape, but I could see that it ... was definitely rescuable and definitely fixable," he said.

After getting the Torah out of Iraq, Youlus also knew whom to call: Rabbi Mark Panoff, spiritual leader of Fulton's Temple Isaiah, who had expressed interest in acquiring a special Torah for the congregation about a year ago.

When he found out, "I was thrilled," Panoff said. "Four hundred years ago, colonists were settling in Jamestown. On the other side of the world, this Torah was being used in a Jewish community in Iraq, of all places."

Youlus gave him three days to accept the offer. Panoff raced to share the story with the congregation's board members, who were quickly able to raise the $20,000 needed for the purchase.

Now the Torah sits behind the doors of the Ark, made with stone from Jerusalem, at the head of Temple Isaiah's sanctuary.

With its dark, gazelle-skin parchment rolled up inside a brilliantly colored round wooden box, the Torah stands out majestically from the two European-style Torahs -- including one rescued from Czechoslovakia during the Holocaust -- on either side, which are dressed in contemporary applique covers.

Saving the scroll

This acquisition is a major event for the 25-year-old congregation. A Torah scroll, which contains the Five Books of Moses written in Hebrew by a scribe under strict guidelines, is the holiest object in Jewish life. It is traditionally read in its entirety every year, carried in procession, usually lavishly decorated and treated with a high degree of reverence.

Panoff quickly noted the city of Mosul is also the site of the ancient city of Nineveh. In the biblical book of Jonah, the prophet is sent by God to foretell Nineveh's destruction and leads its residents to repent (after famously being swallowed by a giant fish) -- another aspect making the story, which Youlus will be sharing with Temple Isaiah's religious school Oct. 28, very serendipitous.

"It was just coincidence, maybe God working," Panoff said.

It also marks the third Torah Youlus has rescued from Iraq, once home to one of the world's oldest Jewish communities. The majority of Iraqi Jews -- about 150,000 during World War II -- left after the state of Israel was created in 1948, and fewer than 40 remain in the country, according to the Jewish Virtual Library, run by the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise. Judaic artifacts are still scattered throughout the Baghdad area, and many Torahs were seized and put in museums during the Saddam Hussein era.

"The fact remains that there are a lot of Torah scrolls still sitting specifically in the Baghdad (National) Museum," Youlus said.

Also the co-owner of the Jewish Bookstore of Greater Washington in Silver Spring, Youlus has re-settled Torahs in Jewish communities around the world since establishing the nonprofit Save A Torah three years ago.

He learned of this Torah via e-mail, but "getting it out wasn't so easy," he said, explaining he had to disassemble its 60 panels to facilitate taking it out of the country.

After finding a scroll, Youlus must determine whether it can be salvaged for religious use. A Torah is kosher, or usable, if it has no missing letters or words and its parchment has no holes or tears. A Torah that is unusable must be buried, since Jewish law forbids discarding writings that contain God's name.

A new home

It took Youlus a relatively short time, four and a half weeks, to restore the Torah. In addition to stitching it back together and patching holes, he had to re-do about 55 percent of the writing.

The nature of the Middle Eastern scroll -- written on dark deer or gazelle skin instead of the lighter sheepskin used by European Jews, and stored in a box rather than on large dowels -- also required special restoration techniques.

"Normally we write with a turkey feather or a goose feather, but you can't use it with that type of parchment," said Youlus, explaining he had to use a piece of wood resembling a chopstick.

"It was plenty of work. But the finished product is very nice," he said.

Although Youlus always attempts to first resettle a Torah with its native community and then with the family that donated it, he said he is ecstatic with where it ended up.

"It obviously was meant so Temple Isaiah could use it and keep the heritage alive," he said. "I feel like I'm doing God's work... I am just happy to be able to unite the Torah with a congregation that will use it and cherish it the way it's supposed to be used."

Panoff said the congregation used it during the High Holidays and plans to have a formal dedication in December.

"It was a thrill," he said about reading it. "People were so excited. For me, it was like touching history in a way, and for them it was very moving."

The Torah, which is being protected with a special alarm system on the Ark, will enrich the congregation as a symbol of Jewish life around the world, he noted.

"This is a historical treasure, very unique and priceless," he said. "I think it adds an extra dimension and awareness that the Jewish people is very diverse, in many lands and different settings, and each setting had its own traditions."(baltimoresun)

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