A Torah’s Journey From New York to Madrid
For Yael Cobano, president of the Comunidad Judía Reformista de Madrid, or Reform Jewish Community of Madrid, the FedEx delivery she received on June 12 wasn’t just any package. Almost Cobano’s height, it contained a sefer Torah, a scroll that was to be CJRM’s Torah. “I cannot stop crying,” Cobano told me in an emotional WhatsApp voice message. “The text that contains our stories [and] our values traveled so far—especially for us.”
Getting their own Torah wasn’t an easy task for this nascent congregation of progressive Jews. When Cobano started CJRM in 2014—together with Ruth Timon, Keren Herrero, and Leidy Andrade—the congregation didn’t have much. They rented a space from a wine shop and borrowed the text for their siddurs from Bet Shalom, a more established Reform congregation in Barcelona. When they came together to celebrate Shabbat—then only once a month—they didn’t know if they’d have enough people to cover the cost of the room.
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