Published: 26 July 2018
Last updated: 5 March 2024
ONE FAMILY AFTER another hurried through Erin Jones-Avni’s front door, anxious to get their first glimpse of the new arrival — to admire its ornate silver breastplate and touch its satiny mantle.
“People just kept coming, and they’d make a beeline for the Torah,” she told JTA from her home in Asuncion, Paraguay’s capital and largest city. “They were overcome with emotion, to show it to their children, to take their picture with it.”
All were members of the country’s first egalitarian minyan, which was founded earlier this year at the home of Gabriela Alonso and her husband, Rabbi Julian Vainstein.
“Now, to have the Torah here, it is amazing,” Alonso said. “It is a new beginning.”
It is also a new chapter in a story that started more than a century ago and a continent away. The inscription on one of the scroll’s wooden dowels is faded but legible: “Property of Cong. B’nai Jacob, Ottumwa, Iowa.”
FULL STORY A Torah scroll makes its way from Iowa to Paraguay, telling a story about modern Judaism on its way (JTA)
Photo: This Torah, inscribed with the phrase “Property of Cong. B’nai Jacob, Ottumwa, Iowa,” has found a new home in Paraguay (Courtesy Amy Ravis Furey)
