A Torah scroll mascot and music greeted community members as Chabad Elon celebrated the dedication of two Sifrei Torah scrolls April 26.

Outside, tables were set up for younger children to participate in arts and crafts activities while Elon University students and adults listened to opening remarks by Rabbi Mendy Minkowitz. 

Minkowitz said that at a technical level, the Torah is read four times a week during services at the synagogue. At a community level, it’s a connection to their faith. 

“A Torah scroll is almost a piece of God,” Minkowitz said during the opening ceremony. “It’s truly godliness in physical form.” 

Written entirely by hand, Minkowitz said the process of dedicating scrolls is meticulous, time-consuming and costly. Expert scribes dedicate about a year to handwriting roughly 300,000 letters with a feather quill onto leather parchment. Minkowitz said the cost of the scroll makes it rarer to have two dedicated to a single community. 

One of the scrolls was dedicated to Chabad by the family of Elon alumna Julia Gross. The other was dedicated by the Mendelsohn family, friends of Chabad Elon, in honor of their late family member, who died during Passover last year. 

Neither scroll is newly written, but Minkowitz said during the event that it makes them all the more special. 

“I would like to think they have an advantage over brand new Torahs because they have with them the accumulated joy and history of communities that already got to enjoy them for many, many decades,” Minkowitz said. 

Julia Stein, a junior at Elon University, was surprised to find out that one of the Torahs had come from a synagogue in Italy, a part of Minkowitz’s childhood. She said that Chabad has provided a close-knit community through the events and Shabbat dinners it hosts. 

“How many people came out, came from outside of Elon or outside of the local area to celebrate this, really showed that this was a really important event,” Stein said.  

Unlike during traditional dedications, where a scribe would write out the last few letters of the scroll, Chabad Elon went straight to the process of hagbah and gelilah. This is the process in which someone raises the open scroll to the crowd and dresses the re-rolled scroll in a cover and ornaments. 

This was followed by a parade down the street, where attendees were invited to sing and dance as the Torah was carried beneath a chupah, or ceremonial canopy. Students holding lit torches walked closely in front of and behind, joining the procession. 

After carrying the Torahs outside, attendees moved indoors for Hakafot, a ceremonial procession filled with worship and dancing with the scrolls before a large buffet meal prepared earlier in the day.

Elon seniors Abby Loubaton and Cooper Walsh said Chabad is a space for students like them to celebrate and practice their faith. 

“We wish that it was closer to campus, but it’s nice to have a home away from home,” Walsh said. 

This was Walsh and Loubaton’s first time attending a Torah dedication. 

“It’s so incredible for us to be at a school and be able to celebrate this,” Loubaton said. “It’s kind of something that usually bigger synagogues are able to celebrate.”

Minkowitz said during his speech to the students that this celebration meant so much more to the community, especially during a time of social unrest and a rise in antisemitism. 

“The most beautiful thing that we can do to prove all the naysayers wrong and to remind ourselves and the community around us of the beauty, the joy and the pride in being Jewish is by rededicating ourselves and doubling down to the beautiful faith, to our beautiful tradition and to our beautiful mitzvahs,” Minkowitz said.