Last Shabbat, Parshat Eikev, celebrated a confluence of events that culminated in the joyous celebration of Adir Koenig becoming a bar mitzvah. Adir, a rising eighth grader at Yeshivat Noam, was called to the Torah to lain Parshat Eikev from a Torah scroll that was rescued after the Shoah by his paternal great grandparents, Vera and Louis Mayers, when they immigrated to the United States from Prague in 1948. Vera, a survivor of Auschwitz, and Louis, a partisan, captured and incarcerated in a Russian labor camp, met and married in Prague in 1947. As they were leaving Prague in 1948 to rebuild their lives in America, they each took one suitcase and together brought one precious Sefer Torah on their journey. This scroll was one of thousands brought to Prague from synagogues that had been desecrated and destroyed by the Nazis throughout Czechoslovakia.
With the precious Sefer Torah and a few possessions, Mr. and Mrs. Mayers began their new lives in Dunkirk, New York, later moving to Erie, Pennsylvania, where they kept the salvaged scroll in their home. Many years later, their daughter Regina married Michael Koenig, moving to Bergenfield, New Jersey over 36 years ago, where they raised their sons Matthew and Jason as well as their daughters, Leora and Romy. The Koenigs attend Congregation B’nai Yeshurun, Congregation Keter Torah and BMOB.
Louis and Vera had very much wanted to make sure the Torah they rescued would have a permanent home in a place that would appreciate its special legacy. In the early 1990’s they decided to donate the Sefer Torah to their grandchildren’s yeshiva high school. Jason was still a student at Frisch, when Rabbi Menachem Meier, then the Head of School at Frisch, was contacted and the arrangements were made for the transfer. After a complete checking by a sofer in Washington Heights, the Torah was relocated to the school and has been in use Mondays and Thursdays for the past 25 plus years.
And so it was until Shabbat, Parshat Ekev, 2016. Thanks to the efforts of Rabbi Eli Ciner, Head of School at Frisch, Adir’s flawless laining was the first reading of a complete parsha from this Sefer Torah in over 75 years.
Proud parents Jason, president of Bais Medrash of Bergenfield where Rabbi Moshe Stavsky is Morah D’asra, is a lawyer at Morgan Stanley, and Taly, an optometrist, joined Adir together with siblings Temira, 15, a rising sophomore at Frisch, Maayan, 11, and Mikaela, 8, both students at Yeshivat Noam.
This past Shabbos was very meaningful for Uncle Dr. Martin Mayers as well, who visited from Long Island to celebrate Adir’s becoming a bar mitzvah. His parsha many years ago was Eikev as well, but because his father Louis had suffered a major heart attack prior to his bar mitzvah, he never got to lain and instead marked his becoming a bar mitzvah at Camp Massad without his parents present. He greatly appreciated the opportunity to recapture the lost moment in his life through the Aliyah that he received on this special occasion from this precious Sefer Torah, which his parents rescued from Czechoslovakia.
By Pearl Markovitz
