A tallit’s tale through the ages
A tallit that’s stood the test of time and the pride in the eyes of its new owner, bar mitzvah boy Jacob Whitmont, ensured tears would flow at Sydney’s Mizrachi Synagogue earlier this month.
A TALLIT that’s stood the test of time and the pride in the eyes of its new owner, bar mitzvah boy Jacob Whitmont, ensured tears would flow at Sydney’s Mizrachi Synagogue earlier this month.
The tallit and its beautiful red-dyed bag, marked with the initials J.W., belonged to Jacob’s great-great-great grandfather Jacob Weissberger who was born in Bochnia, Poland, in 1845.
Against the odds, they remained in the family’s hands after Weissberger’s death despite being handed to his eldest son Moritz, who tragically perished with his wife Anna in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.
Their neighbours came across the tallit and posted it along with other belongings to the couple’s daughter, Helen, as a signal that her parents had been arrested.
She herself was in a work camp at the time, prior to being sent to Bergen-Belsen with her husband Werner.
Having buried the belongings and surviving the Holocaust, she was subsequently able to retrieve them and took them with her to Pennsylvania, when she and Werner moved there after the war.
The treasured tallit was later brought to Australia by Jacob’s older cousin, Lane Cove resident and family history enthusiast Scott Whitmont, who was given it by Helen while he was an exchange student in the US in 1978.
Earlier this month, he passed it on to Jacob as his bar mitzvah present. “I don’t have children myself and I knew the tallit should stay in the family line,” Scott told The AJN.
“Jacob held it like a treasure and I knew immediately I’d made the right decision.”
The day Jacob received the tallit was Yom Hashoah and it was accompanied with a letter penned by Scott, detailing the rich heritage of five generations of the item’s previous owners.
“Given that you carry the same name as your great-great-great grandfather, I decided that its proper place should be in your possession,” he wrote.
“The key to wanting people to look after something valuable and treasure it is the passing on of these stories,” Scott told The AJN.
“If these stories aren’t told, then they’re lost. That’s not just true of the Holocaust, that’s with any family history.”
Jacob’s father, Theo, said everyone was incredibly moved by Jacob wearing the century-old tallit at his bar mitzvah – the first time it had been worn in more than 90 years.
“I don’t think his namesake, Jacob Weissberger, really could have imagined that would be the case five generations later,” Theo said.
NATACHA MALOON
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