Mazel tov! The whole shtetl buzzed with the news. Chanka, the butcherâs daughter, was engaged to Yankel, the carpenterâs son. It was a local match, so the whole town got involved in the wedding preparations. A week before the wedding, Chanka could be found sewing the last few stitches on he…
By Justin Vellucci January 25, 2021, 2:36 pm Edit
Marilyn Weinblum stands next to the case displaying Jakob s Torah at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh in 2001. (Photo provided by Marilyn Weinblum)
It was the evening of Nov. 9, 1938, and throughout Nazi-controlled Germany, government-sanctioned violence was leading to destroyed synagogues, social unrest and the arrest of thousands of Jewish citizens. That night would become known as Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass.
Jakob Weinblum, a Jewish teenager born in Forst (Lausitz), Germany, risked his life that night to flee to his shul, where he managed to save its cherished Torah scroll before the building was burned. In 1939, the Torah accompanied him and his family to the only country taking Jews without passports China. After eight years in a makeshift Shanghai synagogue, the Torah traveled, along with Jakob, to the U.S. and eventually found a home at Tree of Life-Sf