Nobody seems to know how Prince George's small Jewish community got a Torah - a sacred scroll - to use during their meetings in the 1970s, but Marlies Greulich, executive director of the local Multicultural Heritage Society, was able to connect a researcher to an original member of the group to tell the story of how the Torah came to Vancouver's Temple Sholom in the late '70s, early '80s.
Evelyn Lazare, member of the Temple Sholom congregation, was asked by her rabbi to do research and write a report about the history of the eight scrolls used at the temple, including documenting the process as one was written in celebration of their 50th anniversary in 2015.
Lazare, a professional writer and novelist, found information on all but one scroll during eight months of research.
"It was amazing - just amazing," said Lazare, about how the information came to her about the Prince George Torah.
"What happened was I had tracked seven of the eight scrolls, but the eighth one was proving to be very elusive and there were a variety of snippets of information that I had found saying it came from here or there - Mission or Trail or Alberta or Seattle - so I managed to establish that it didn't come from any of the other places. The only remaining possibility was Prince George."
So after doing an online search last fall for a synagogue in Prince George and realizing there was none, Lazare then turned to community organizations and found the Multicultural Heritage Society of Prince George.
"I thought well, it's a shot," said Lazare. "I called and Marlies answered the phone and I introduced myself and told her what I was doing and asked if she could help and she said yes, she knew something about it. I almost fell off my chair."
In the early '80s Greulich and Myron Sambad, a local Jewish man, sat on a committee to organize the first Oktoberfest in Prince George.
"And when we had a casual talk between meetings somehow it came up that Myron was Jewish and he talked about things like during their worship services they had a Torah they read from - it's like their Bible or quran, except it's not a book, it's scrolls," said Greulich.
"He mentioned it was no longer in Prince George because the number of Jewish people had dwindled, and the Torah needed to be stored properly and so it was sent to Vancouver."
At the end of the fateful telephone conversation Greulich told Lazare she would call her back when she got more information.
"I tell you within 20 minutes Myron called me," said Lazare. "And we were on the phone for a long time - a long time - and he told me the story of the small group of Jewish people in Prince George and he couldn't be specific about the dates."
He finally was able to pinpoint in general terms when the group existed and when the Torah was sent from Prince George to Temple Sholom by referencing his children's ages as he remembered bringing them to activities involving the Torah scroll, said Lazare.
"So it was based on the ages of his children and I worked backwards to figure out when this happened and it correlated precisely with the time that this mysterious Torah scroll arrived from Prince George. So I don't claim that this is it but, by process of elimination, I believe this is it and since then I have had people corroborate bits and pieces about the Jewish people in Prince George."
In the research report Lazare determined the Prince George Torah was created after the Second World War, likely in Israel, and scribed in the Chassidic style on glazed cow parchment. It is only one of two post-war Torahs at Temple Sholom.
Greulich was happy to bring together Lazare and Sambad, who is out of the country and could not be reached for comment by press time.
"I am just so happy that Evelyn was able to connect with Myron," said Greulich. "The story ended happily because people were able to get enough information to put it all together. These are sacred scrolls and they are very important to the Jewish religion and it's nice when it can be traced like that."
