The Torahs set to be rededicated at Old York Road Temple-Beth Am have touched the lives of many of its congregants, and many others from far and wide.

The rededication ceremony set to take place this weekend at Old York Road Temple-Beth Am for three Torah scrolls that were rescued from the Holocaust will cap a yearlong spiritual journey for the event’s committee chair.

Deena Schuman, a retired law firm administrator who grew up in West Philadelphia and now lives in Jenkintown, took on the project of organizing the event after attending an adult education program run by Rabbi Robert Leib about the rescue of the scrolls from the Czech Republic.

“I had been looking for something meaningful to do for some time,” said Schuman. “I thought, ‘Aha, this is for me,’ because returning to the dead their names and identities has always had a resonance with me.”

She immersed herself in learning the stories behind the Torahs and the Holocaust victims who had once worshipped from them.

All three Torahs are part of a group of 1,564 scrolls that were smuggled out of small Jewish communities during the Holocaust from around what was then known as Czechoslovakia and safely protected in Prague during World War II. In 1964, the scrolls were transferred to the Westminster Synagogue in London, where they were housed and cared for by the Memorial Scrolls Trust, eventually being sent out on long-term loans to synagogues and organizations around the world.

As anyone from Old York Road Temple-Beth Am will tell you, it’s rare for an organization to house even one of the scrolls from this elite selection, let alone three.

In the case of the Reform congregation in Abington, the first two scrolls, which were brought over from London in 1972 and 1973, originated from the towns of Tabor and Louny respectively.

The third Torah, originally from a community called Svetla, was brought over to Temple Beth Torah in 1982. When the two congregations merged 22 years later, the Torah affectionately referred to by Leib as “the little Torah from Svetla” joined the ark at Old York Road Temple-Beth Am.

“To think of the journey that they took from their three towns, and the shuls in which they were housed, to Prague during World War II, from Prague to London, from London to the States and now ultimately here to Abington, it’s really an incredible story,” said Leib. “They bind us, they inspire us, they challenge us.”

Last year Leib and his wife, Randy, led a group of 26 people, mostly members of his congregation, on a tour of Central Europe, with a focus on Jewish sites — and a desire to dig into their scrolls’ history.

Both Tabor and Svetla were destroyed in the war, so they visited Louny, accompanied by the president of the Czech Jewish community. There, they met with the town’s mayor and visited the historic Jewish cemetery as well as the remains of its synagogue, which currently operates as a local government archive.

Upon their return, Leib said he was inspired to ask his congregation if they would like to hold a rededication ceremony for the scrolls to mark 50 years since their transfer from Prague to London.

“It’s been a very emotional journey,” Schuman said of her explorations of the scrolls’ histories, which led her to reach out to the Memorial Scrolls Trust, Yad Vashem and contacts in Prague, among many others. “It’s involved now at least 50 people from the congregation doing one thing or another, and we’re looking forward to a very moving program.”

The rededication ceremony on Nov. 2, at 3 p.m., which is free and open to the public, will feature artwork made by children from the congregation, three presenters telling the stories of each of the scrolls and a soon-to-be Bat Mitzvah girl who will read passages for the following Shabbat from each Torah.

Schuman also noted that the committee’s research brought to their attention the Morawetz family of Svetla, who once owned a 70-room castle in the Czech town before fleeing to escape the Holocaust — one of the few families that did. Over the summer, Beth Am congregant and committee member Jane Hurwitz traveled to Greenwich Village in New York with a small group to interview 98-year-old Herbert Morawetz, bringing along the Torah from his town.

Morawetz recounted that his family wasn’t particularly connected to Judaism, but they attended synagogue on the night of the signing of the Munich Agreement in 1938, when the then 22-year-old Morawetz was called up to the Torah to recite the ritual Torah blessing. Morawetz asked if it would be appropriate to hold the Torah and recite the blessing again right then and there, Hurwitz recalled.

“It was so incredibly emotional and moving — a moment to be treasured,” Hurwitz said. “I’m crying now. When he held that Torah, there wasn’t a dry eye; we just absolutely broke down. It was an incredible experience to see him hold that Torah with such love and respect and honor after 76 years.”

Several members of the Morawetz family will attend the rededication ceremony, where a video clip of the meeting with Herbert Morawetz will be displayed.

Also in attendance will be Cheryl Friedenberg, a member of Temple Beth Torah’s 1982 confirmation class, which raised the funds and helped secure the loan of the Svetla Torah.

Friedenberg recalled reading from the Torah as a Bat Mitzvah. When her two daughters came of age in 2011 and this past June, respectively, they also read from the Svetla Torah.

“I always felt a connection with the Torah,” Friedenberg said, noting that as a child, her role in the original dedication service for the Svetla Torah was talking about the children of Svetla, most of whom perished in the Holocaust.

Sharing a tradition of reading from the scroll with her daughters has brought them closer together and rekindled her personal link with the Torah, she said.

Friedenberg shares another connection with the scrolls through her mother, whose second husband is Peter Rafaeli, the Honorary Consul General of the Czech Republic, based in the Philadelphia area.

Rafaeli will be at the ceremony and, Leib said, there were indications that someone from the Czech Republic’s office in Washington, D.C., might also make an appearance.

“These Czech Holocaust memorial scrolls have an utterly distinct, unique history, unlike any other,” said Leib. “To think that they have been successfully rescued, repaired and redeemed — I just hope that makes an impact and an impression on the hearts of my congregants.”

Based on the efforts invested in the ceremony by Schuman, Hurwitz and many others, it looks like it already has.

For more information on the program, go to: oyrtbetham.org.