Torah ark burned by Nazis reconstructed in Israel

A team from northern Israel has reconstructed an ornate Torah ark destroyed by the Nazis in Poland.

The ark belonged to a synagogue located in what was once the heart of the small Jewish community of Jaslo in southeast Poland. Nazi forces occupied the town in 1939 and set fire to the magnificent synagogue on Yom Kippur of that year. The Nazis would go on to kill the Jews of Jaslo. In 1945, the town was liberated by the Russian Army. The few dozen members of the community that managed to survive were scattered all over the world following the war. Several of them reached the Canadian city of Toronto, where they decided to reconstruct the synagogue of their childhood.

Lavi Furniture Industries, located on the religious Kibbutz Lavi in the Lower Galilee, was commissioned for the job. Company CEO Micha Oberman told Israel Hayom that "the Torah ark in the Jaslo synagogue was dedicated in 1905. With a height of 11.5 meters (38 feet) and a width of six meters (20 feet), it was one of the largest and most magnificent Torah arks ever built in any synagogue, anywhere in the world. It can hold up to 15 Torah scrolls."

Oberman said that "the precise reconstruction of the original Torah ark was completed with the help of archive photography and research by the Beit Hatfutsot Museum of the Jewish People. The reconstruction took eight months at a cost of 1.2 million shekels. The reconstructed Torah ark was placed in the synagogue in the Forest Hill community in Toronto about a week ago."

During the manufacturing and carving stages, around eight cubic meters of wood and a variety of techniques were used -- some traditional, like drawing samples, sketches, carving and etching, and some innovative techniques, such as 3D laser scans and processing computerized machines.

The few minor changes made to the ark's original form were made to enable wheelchair access to the ark and the altar.