How a Connecticut Torah scroll traveled 50 years, and thousands of miles, to make aliyah - opinion

The next time you are tempted to diss social media, consider that it can have wonderful benefits. Here’s an example.

Among its Torah scrolls was one written in memory of a four-year-old boy, Avi Seth, the son of the congregation’s former rabbi.

The Torah belonged to Rabbi Michael Laxmeter, but the congregants could not find him, although his last name was unusual, perhaps even unique.

My name.

As it happens, Jenny and I both grew up in Colchester, Connecticut, then a town of 5,000 residents. Its Jewish community had been strengthened by Baron Maurice de Hirsch, the 19th-century financier who helped persecuted Eastern European and Russian Jews settle as farmers in places such as Colchester.

My father’s family moved to the small New England town before 1920, seeking fresh air and renewed health after their immigration to the Lower East Side of New York.

Jenny’s parents survived the Holocaust and arrived in the early 1950’s. They bought an old farm with a pond and blueberry bushes. They invested in a batch of chicks and started their poultry business, eventually building the brick house where Jenny grew up. Her mother, Henny Rosenbaum Markiewicz Simon, was a well-known Holocaust educator.

Jenny messaged me on Facebook. Could this possibly be the same Rabbi Laxmeter who had led the congregation before her time at the synagogue? How did I know him?

I assured her that it was the same Rabbi Laxmeter. The synagogue had an old address for him, but it was incorrect.

I put them in touch.

By then, Rabbi Michael Laxmeter was widowed and retired. He had left the East Coast for warmer Las Vegas in 2011. In Las Vegas, Rabbi Laxmeter joined the same synagogue as our only friend in that city, Jeralyn “Jeri” Goldman. My husband and I had met her while speaking at the Young Israel Aish synagogue. Like Jenny, Jeri was an active member of her congregation. When we first met, we were both saying Kaddish for our mothers.

I rejoiced when, eight years later, she wrote to tell me that she was getting married. I was even more delighted when we met her charming and erudite Talmud teacher and husband, Rabbi Michael Laxmeter.

Over the years, we happily got together numerous times, both in Las Vegas and in Israel.

According to Beth Tefila records, there were fewer than a dozen Jewish families in East Hartford before the mid 1940’s. The city experienced a growth spurt, related to the expansion of Pratt and Whitney’s aircraft-engine plant.

During and after World War II, as new families, houses, and neighborhoods grew up around the factory. Among them were more Jewish families. In 1948, the Jewish families held their first High Holiday services and celebrated the first Bar Mitzvah the following year.

In 1970, in its period of growth, Rabbi Laxmeter assumed the congregation’s leadership. It was his first pulpit, and he would remain there for six years. The congregation was joyfully constructing its own first synagogue building.

Then personal tragedy struck.

In 1974, Rabbi Laxmeter and his wife, Judith, lost their four-year-old son, Avi Seth, to a rare complication of croup.

Even as a three-year-old, Avi Seth loved Torah scrolls. While the synagogue building was under construction, the Torah scrolls were kept in his father’s home office. Avi Seth was particularly enthralled by a miniature Torah kept behind a tiny door in the breastplate of one of the scrolls.

The congregation perpetuated the memory of its rabbi and rebbetzin’s son by donating a Torah scroll in his Hebrew name, Avraham Shalom.

Half a century later, times had changed in East Hartford. What had once been a young and thriving congregation was about to close its synagogue doors. What should be done with the Torah scroll dedicated in Avi Seth’s memory?

Jenny passed Rabbi Laxmeter’s information to fellow congregant Helene Shapiro, at whose bat mitzvah the young rabbi had officiated.

Jeri and Rabbi Laxmeter funded the Torah’s transfer to Las Vegas. An expert Torah scribe checked the entire scroll to make certain that it remained kosher and fully legible. They ordered a new mantle and added the names of their beloved late spouses, Judith Friedlander Laxmeter and Herbert Marshall Goldman.

The Torah was dedicated at a celebration marking Rabbi Laxmeter’s 80th birthday in Las Vegas, in the hope that the synagogue would flourish and grow to need an additional Torah scroll. The congregation, however, was undergoing a difficult transition and eventually divided into separate groups.

By then, Jeralyn and Rabbi Laxmeter had moved to Jerusalem, settling at Mediterranean Towers in Talpiot. The senior independent living residence has its own synagogue, where Rabbi Laxmeter sometimes chants the weekly Torah portion.

They decided that the Torah should move once again.

This time, they sent it east to Philadelphia, where Jeri’s son Amir and daughter- in -law, the well-known Torah scholar Stacey Fruen Goldman, would accompany it to Israel.

“We were excited and honored to bring the Torah to Jerusalem,” said Torah-teacher Stacey Fruen Goldman. “Our Rabbi lent us a specially outfitted padded case. Our travel agent notified El Al in Newark, and they were prepared.

“The El Al staff very respectfully escorted us through security, where the Torah needed to go through the machine for oversized items. When we told people in line with us at security ‘who’ would be on the same flight, they said they had goosebumps. The Torah was too big for a premium seat, so the staff emptied the special closet between premium and coach and placed the Torah there.”

That’s how my husband and I had the privilege of being present as the Connecticut-born Torah scroll completed its journey.

Sheltered beneath a tallit held aloft like a huppah, the Torah was serenaded by a Russian immigrant clarinetist. Residents of Mediterranean Towers, together with friends and family, including at least one of Jeri’s grandsons serving in Israel as a lone soldier, lined the way as it was carried into the synagogue and placed in the ark. Rabbi Laxmeter led the blessings and singing.

It is a tree of life for those who hold fast to it and happy are those who uphold it. Its ways are ways of pleasantness and all its paths are peace.”

So this is how my husband and I, now longtime friends of Jeri and Rabbi Laxmeter, got to sing along and celebrate. I was glad to have played a tiny part in the aliyah journey of this Torah scroll.

My thanks also to Mark Zuckerberg.