Congregation Beit Simcha has been blessed to receive on permanent loan a Czech Torah Scroll saved from the Holocaust. The Memorial Scrolls Trust in London, which preserves and allocates these precious connections to our Jewish heritage that were saved from the flames, is based in Westminster Synagogue, which was founded by Rabbi Harold Reinhart, of blessed memory, Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon’s great-uncle. Rabbi Reinhart was instrumental in these Torah scrolls’ rescue, and their reallocation as living reminders of the ongoing vitality of Judaism and the Jewish people.

Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon and his own son, Boaz Cohon, are holding the Torah in front of Rabbi Reinhart’s photo in his former apartment in London, which is now the museum of the Trust. That very Torah, rededicated in memory of Rabbi Samuel S. and A. Irma Cohon by Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon’s father, Rabbi Baruch Cohon, was used in every service of Beit Simcha from its inception in the fall of 2018 until the fall of 2022.