Balla Torah comes to KDHS

ELI FRIEDLAND

People, places and things all have something in common. They are all measured by the value and worth that people place upon them. People also place values on laws, history and faith. The Balla Torah is a part of Vancouver’s Jewish cultural heritage. This Torah sums up the aforementioned values: laws, history and faith. The Torah is a book of laws containing a huge portion of our written Jewish history, and we place our faith in the Torah. Each year, on Simchat Torah, the Jewish holiday when we finish reading the Torah and commence the reading cycle again, King David High School holds a huge celebration. All students and teachers dance and sing with the holy Torah.

A Chassidic quote states, “On Simchat Torah we rejoice in the Torah, and the Torah rejoices in us; the Torah, too, wants to dance, so we become the Torah’s dancing feet.” We’re reveling in the fact that we have spent an entire year learning from these words and embracing all that they have taught us.

The Torah teaches people myriad points, such as love, honor and wisdom. But the paramount topics to which I am referring are commitment and faith.

The story of the Balla Torah starts towards the end of the Holocaust in 1944 with a woman named Bluma Balla. Bluma lived in Budapest, Hungary, with her baby son, constantly on the move, hiding from the Nazi regime. Her husband had been taken to a forced labor camp and she was left with only two precious possessions – her baby and the family Torah, what we now call the Balla Torah. Then, tragedy struck this brave woman. Her baby died shortly before liberation. However, thanks to her protective devotion, the Torah scroll survived. Bluma protected the scroll despite her need to stay mobile and secure her own survival.

This history was shared by Bluma’s second son, Rabbi Imre Balla, born after the Second World War in 1948. Rabbi Balla served as rabbi of Congregation Har El in North Vancouver for many years. The Torah stayed with Rabbi Balla until his last days. One of his final wishes was that the Torah be donated to the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre (VHEC), where he had been involved on the board of directors.

Students at KDHS were honored to hear Rita Akselrod, a child survivor of the Holocaust from Romania and VHEC outreach speaker coordinator, give a talk at the school’s Simchat Torah celebration about the significance of the Balla Torah for herself and other survivors. Akselrod said that the Balla Torah remains a sign of hope and survival in a time filled with despair.

My hope and the hope of all those with a connection to the Balla Torah is that it continues to be used for only beautiful moments and to be read, as it was on Simchat Torah at KDHS. May the wealth of knowledge that is recorded on its parchment continue to be studied and passed down from generation to generation.

Eli Friedland is a Grade 9 student at King David High School.

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