Rabbi rescues Torah shield from obscurity

The New Reform Temple’s Rabbi Jacques Cukierkorn delights in finding traces of Judaism in out-of-the-way places. It has taken the Brazilian native back to his native South America many times to help the descendants of Inquisition-era  conversos reclaim their Jewish heritage. And recently it took him to Easton, Kan., to rescue a Torah shield, which now resides in his office collection of Judaica.

As the rabbi explains it, it started with a call from former Leavenworth, Kan., Mayor Joel Grodberg, who is Jewish.

Through an intermediary, Grace Beursken, the owner of the Torah shield, had reached out to Grodberg in an attempt to ensure that the ritual object would wind up in a place of honor. Her home was just a few miles west of Leavenworth.

“The story goes that last summer she was antiquing in Dwight, Kan., (Ed. note: 25 miles south of Manhattan) where a dealer was liquidating his store, and she stumbles onto the Torah shield,” said Rabbi Cukierkorn. “It was disassembled, and the stones were numbered. The dealer said his grandfather bought it from someone who had it in the 1880s.”

Rabbi Cukierkorn says that provenance could be close to right. He suspects the decorative object came from a small synagogue in the region that closed.

“It’s copper,” he said. “It has the names of the 12 tribes in English and something on top like ‘Let’s glorify God’s name.’ If it’s in English that early, that means it has to be from a Reform synagogue.”

In any case, Beursken bought the Torah shield, but then fell ill and moved into a nursing home. When she realized she was dying, she reached out to Grodberg and Rabbi Cukierkorn to ensure that the item “gets in the right hands,” as the rabbi remembers her saying.

“I went to visit Grace in the nursing home in Easton,” he said. “She gave me the object, and we met a few more times before she passed away.”

Because NRT Torahs already have their own breastplates, Beursken’s shield has, for now, joined the rabbi’s personal Judaica collection, which also includes such items as an antique Polish tzedakah box and a window from a Polish synagogue associated with the Ger sect of Chasidim.

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