Slovakian Ambassador Lubomír Rehák has praised a North London shul for keeping the memory of an extinct community alive by using its Torah scroll.
Mr Rehák was a guest at an event at Northwood and Pinner Liberal Synagogue based around its scroll from Spišská Nová Ves in the east of Slovakia. NPLS members have spent the past two decades researching the community that once lived there.
Cynthia Drapkin, a project leader, took the envoy through the findings and the NPLS archive. Senior rabbi Aaron Goldstein and emeritus rabbi Dr Andrew Goldstein, the president of Liberal Judaism, then showed him the scroll, explaining that it had survived the Holocaust by being hidden in a wardrobe compartment.
They also told him how it was used weekly on Shabbat and how children learned from it.
