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A Very Small Sefer Torah

By Rabbi Benzion Shafier

Joachim Joseph was a twelve-year-old boy when Rabbi Jasberg approached him saying, "It will soon be your Bar Mitzvah, and I want to teach you to read from the Torah."

Initially, Joachim was resistant, but with persistence, Rabbi Dasberg won out, and Joachim Josef lained from a very small Sefer Torah - in Auschwitz.

At the risk of his life, Rabbi Jasberg smuggled the small Sefer Torah into the concentration camp and wanted Joachim to lain from it. At first Joachim was hesitant, but in the end, hiding under the very noses of the Nazi guards, they gathered together a minyan and Joachim lained from that Sefer Torah.

After the bar mitzvah "celebration" Rabbi Dasberg had another request for Joachim - to take possession of the Sefer Torah. Again, at first, Joachim refused. How could he, a young boy, take responsibility for this precious article? Rabbi Dasberg explained. "I am an old man. I probably won't make it out alive. You are young - you will survive. I want you to take this Torah, and promise me that you will tell the whole world about it."

In the end, Joachim agreed. He took the Sefer Torah, and he survived. He ended up in the Displaced Persons camp after the war, and later made it to Israel. He placed the Sefer Torah in a small closet in his apartment. And the Sefer Torah sat in that closet for 57 years.

One day, the Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon went to consult with Dr. Joachim Josef about certain issues relating to his mission aboard the spacecraft Columbia. Somehow the conversation turned to the Sefer Torah in Dr. Josef 's possession, and Ilan asked for permission to take it with him when he went up into space.

The story has a tragic ending because the Columbia exploded into flames upon its reentry into the earth's atmosphere. But the promise made so many years earlier was fulfilled. The whole world learned about that Sefer Torah on board.