Torah Dedication

Torah Dedication

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    ​Israel Consulate General to the Southwest United States was onhand for a Torah dedication at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

    Dr. and Mrs. Paige Patterson hosted the ceremony.

    The scroll survived the Spanish Inquisition and was gifted to the school.
  • Photo Credit: Karen Naumann
     
    ​Scott Carroll, Ph.D and Sr. Research Scholar director of Manuscript Research Group displays and explains the historical and religious significance of the rare Sephardi Torah at a dedication ceremony.
     
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  • A Chapel service followed the dedication ceremony.

  • Sephardi Torah

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    ​​Many Torah scrolls bear the scars of oppression and tyranny, but this one is unusually special; it is one of the few scrolls to escape the Spanish Inquisition. The brutal expulsion of nearly 200,000 Jews from Spain was executed in 1492 (a day before Christopher Columbus departed on his famed voyage of discovery).

    Only 10 near-complete scrolls from pre-Inquisition Spain are known to exist today. The Sephardi Torah is one of them.

    Exceedingly rare, Jewish texts from this era testify to the formative centuries of late-rabbinic Judaism. this Torah is among the earliest direct witnessess to the textual tradition of medievel Judaism, the Aleppo Codex, and to the life of fait and of practice for the Jews. The scroll features a number of scribal pecularities that, while known in part, are rarely attested in early scrolls from Spain.

    Although it has suffered from general wear and tear, considering the age and the historical circumstances, the Torah scroll is in remarkable condition.