Seattle-Jerusalem latest trip for family Torah

Source of religious instruction
Knowing little about where she was going except that there were few Jews, my grandmother brought the Torah, which had been housed in a synagogue supported by the family, so her children would have a source of religious instruction.

My mother, Merry Gralnek, the youngest of nine, was born in 1917. The Torah remained in the household until 1939, when Sons of Israel Congregation was organized in Marshalltown. I attended services there a few times and must have seen the little Torah, but never was I or any of my siblings told it was part of our family heritage.

None of the Gralneks from the immigrant generation would say much about the old country. Too painful, they said.

There were stories about my grandmother hiding her children in the oven during pogroms, about her oldest daughter, my Aunt Lena, knitting lace for the Radziwill family, Polish nobles, to help keep the family fed while my grandfather was away.

Nothing was said about the Torah.

When Sons of Israel was disbanded in 1985, two standard-sized Torahs were sent to other synagogues. My aunts Esther and Tillie Gralnek, now deceased, retrieved the small scroll with its vestments and took it to Mom for safekeeping.

She never told any of us.

In January 1989, as my mother lay dying, my brother and I flew to Sioux City to help my father prepare for her funeral. The morning after we arrived, he called down the hall, "Tim, can you come in here a minute? I want to show you something."

There, in the room where he was staying, the Torah lay in a dresser drawer with documents attesting to its history and ownership. Rabbis verified that it had been properly made but needed repairs, which were done in Seattle after my aunts decided that ownership would pass to my brother.

Torah taken to family events
Over the years, I carried the Torah to family events, including a reunion in Minnesota.

Israel was another order of magnitude.

First I rolled the scroll to the passage that Yoni would be reading. Then I replaced the vestment, wrapped it in a large flannel sheet and placed it into a nondescript soft gray bag that never left my sight on the flights between Seattle and Tel Aviv except when it was in the overhead luggage rack.

In Israel it was never away from the family except when it was in a fireproof safe within the ark for Yoni's second bar mitzvah service, on the Sabbath, at a synagogue his family attends in Haifa.

For me, the responsibility was a joy. Lifetimes can pass without such golden moments — and I can hardly wait to travel again with our Torah, for the bar mitzvah of Yoni's brother, Ariel, in 2011.

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