Torah

Temple Emanuel's Rabbi Edwin N. Soslow Library, a focal point of the Cherry Hill synagogue, has a new look. While celebrating the library's 10th anniversary last year, "we wanted to take a new approach and make the library more of a focal point in the lives of our members," said Bonnie Slobodien, the Springdale Road temple's director of family-life education. Out went dozens of books of a more secular nature, and in went several computer terminals and new books with Judaism as the central theme.

For more than five years, a sign reading Future Home of Kol Emet has stood alongside Oxford Valley Road in Lower Makefield. Now, after years of nomadic worshiping, fund-raising, and battling with neighbors over setbacks and size, the still-standing sign is at long last obsolete. On Friday, for the first time in Kol Emet's 15-year history, the 250-member synagogue planned to hold its first service inside its own building. All this weekend, dances and concerts were scheduled to celebrate the culmination of years of hard work.

Annette and Marty Cohen have shared many events in their 61 years of marriage, and on Saturday night they will celebrate a joyous occasion when Marty, 83, and Annette, 83, are called to the Torah for their bar and bat mitzvahs. In the Jewish religion, a bar or bat mitzvah is observed as a coming-of-age ritual, when children are expected to observe the commandments. Usually it takes place when a child is 13, and that's when Marty Cohen first went through the rite. But for Annette Cohen, raised in a strict Orthodox home, this will be her first time.

An old Torah scroll with a tale of survival will be formally presented tomorrow to Old York Road Temple-Beth Am, a Reform Jewish synagogue in Abington. Jack Garden, a Rydal cardiologist, thought the job of cleaning out his late parents' Brooklyn home was finished when his wife, Abbie Newman, felt compelled to take a final look in an upstairs closet. There, on the top shelf, was what looked a pile of old towels. But when she felt the stack, she could tell there was something hard underneath.

An 18th-century Roman marriage contract, a Torah wrapper dating to the 1600s and a World War II-era wedding canopy are among the pieces that will be on display Sunday through Dec. 22 at Temple Judea Museum at Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel in Elkins Park. The nearly 100 items in the exhibition, "A Select Few Select: Treasures from the Collection," were chosen by guest "selectors" who were invited to rummage through the permanent collection vaults for inspirational pieces, said Rita Rosen Poley, the museum director.

The students of Temple Sinai's religious school have a tough but noble task ahead of them: raising 1.5 million pennies. Each coppery coin represents one of the 1.5 million Jewish children who perished in the Nazi Holocaust. It is just one part of an effort to raise money for a proposed Holocaust memorial in Temple Sinai's Cutler Lobby, at Limekiln Pike and Dillon Road. The memorial would be the centerpiece of a proposed expansion at the synagogue that would include an expanded library, a conference room and a lounge.

Yaffa Bruckner and Deena Garfinkel are observant Jewish women whose busy weeks culminate with Sabbath festivities each Friday night and Saturday afternoon. The gatherings bring people together for a feast not only of food but also of music and impromptu scriptural commentary. "There's a saying: Where there's Torah, there's food, and where there isn't Torah, there is no food," Garfinkel says. But there is at least one major distinction that even an outsider might notice between the two women's Sabbath meals.

Arthur B. Morgenstern, 60, who gave up a successful career as a real estate attorney and investor at age 50 to study the Torah, died of cancer May 24 at his home in Penn Valley. Mr. Morgenstern had attained financial goals in real estate and development, particularly of apartments in Philadelphia area and South Jersey, but was looking for a deeper meaning in life, his family said. He had worked 18 years with Strouse Greenberg & Co. in developing shopping centers in the area before striking out on his own in 1985.

Congregation Shivtei Yeshuron Ezras Israel, a converted rowhouse synagogue in South Philadelphia, is among the last of its kind - perhaps the very last in the city - and yet it has now celebrated a first. The 200-year-old building, with pressed tin walls and frosted windows, has held many bar mitzvahs and has long adhered to the Orthodox tradition of separating male and female worshipers. Yesterday, the synagogue at Fourth Street and Snyder Avenue embraced its first bat mitzvah, as 13-year-old Alexandra Nessa Berg crossed into religious adulthood.

Just in time for Passover, Congregation Beth El in Yardley has acquired a new Torah for its synagogue. The Torah was given to Beth El by member Randall Flager to honor the 50th wedding anniversary of his parents, Andy and Renee Flager. It will be dedicated May 6, church officials said. The Torah, the sacred book of Judaism, contains the Five Books of Moses, which serve as a religious and moral code. Jews believe God revealed the books to Moses on Mount Sinai after the exodus from Egypt.