The search for the lost Anzac Torah

Journal article

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In Journal Issue

Australian Jewish Historical Society Journal, 20, 1 (2010)

Author(s) Joe Lederman AbstractOn 15 September 2003 the Perth Hebrew Congregation held a Siyyum Sefer Torah to celebrate the rediscovery and re-dedication of a Torah scroll that accompanied the Australian Jewish soldiers on the battlefields of the First World War but which had subsequently disappeared from history. The article tells the story of the search for the missing 'ANZAC' Torah (even though it was never in Gallipoli). In 2002, the author was looking through the Australian Jewry Book of Honour: the Great War, 1914-1918, borrowed from the Victorian Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen (VAJEX) that contains a number of photographs under the heading 'Australian Jewish Services in the Field'. It was one of these photographs, of ANZAC chaplain Reverend David Freedman from Perth, holding up a beautifully encased small Torah of the Sephardi style at a prayer service of Australian Jewish soldiers, that caught the author's eye. He then researches the origins of this Torah, and discovers its whereabouts after it returned to Australia in 1918 with Reverend Freeman.
Year2010
Pages58-67