Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Torah on Board!

I spotted this story over on Tzipiyah.com and had to share. It's a very, very snazzy little newsbite about a Torah scroll dedication aboard the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv commuter train in Israel!
 

A specially commissioned Torah scroll was dedicated on Sunday for use aboard a commuter train by a traveling prayer quorum (minyan) on the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv line. ...
Between 20 and 40 people pray in the train's Mesilat Yesharim Minyan [prayer group] each morning after it leaves the Beit Shemesh station. The last carriage on the early morning train is unofficially reserved as the temporary "synagogue," drawing both men and women, as well as Israel Railways crew members. The regular participants are a mixture of native Israelis and immigrants from North America and Europe who work in Tel Aviv in banking, law, computers, medicine, education and business, but who choose to live in the religious communities in Jerusalem or Beit Shemesh. ...

Darren Shaw made Aliyah from London in August 2006 ... hired a scribe to write an unusually small Torah, which is just 30 centimeters [about 12 inches] high. Fellow traveler Ariel Abraham, originally from Elizabeth, New Jersey, has converted a suitcase on wheels into a portable Holy Ark.