After 50 years on a dusty shelf in Germany, Hebrew scrolls return to Israel

JEWISH TELEGRAPH AGENCY
By Marcy Oster

Torah scrolls sat on a dusty shelf in an office in the Martinus Library in Mainz for some 50 years.(Courtesy of Martinus Library)

JERUSALEM (JTA) — When Leor Jacobi visited a Catholic library in the German city of Mainz to examine its Judaica collection, he was surprised when library officials showed him three centuries-old Hebrew scrolls that had been sitting on a dusty shelf for some 50 years. Jacobi, a doctoral candidate in Jewish art at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, visited Mainz in March. He was there as a guest of the Johannes Gutenberg University to study the particular Mainz version of the Yom Kippur prayer book. Mainz is known as Magentza in Yiddish. [More]