 | There were two things 9-year-old Louis Keene was sad about giving up when his family made the leap into Orthodox Judaism: 8-piece chicken McNuggets, and the holy ark his dad had built to hold the Torah scroll for his family’s Reform synagogue. “Laboring for months at his table saw, he created something both formidable and beautiful. Thirteen points around its roof paid tribute to Maimonides’ principles of faith. A spotlight in the ark’s ceiling illuminated from within Hebrew letters sawed into its doors. The ark was large enough to hold several scrolls — or at that age, me and my two sisters,” Keene writes. Sometime in fall 2024, his parents got a call from Ohr HaTorah’s founders, Rabbi Mordechai Finley and Meirav Finley. The Reform congregation of his childhood was going remote. Did they have any interest in taking back the ark his dad had built? Among the treasures that Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center lost in the Eaton fire earlier this year was its original ark, and the Keene ark now serves PJTC from the Methodist church where they’ve been meeting since February. submitted by /u/forward |
Source: Reditt
