Kol Ami has always found holiness wherever we gather – homes, schools, outdoors, and online. Our current home at the Kimel Family Education Centre is where we come together to pray, learn, sing, and celebrate.
Hiddur Mitzvah teaches us to approach Jewish life with care, joy, and beauty. Guided by this principle, our Sacred Space Committee has helped enhance our environment with meaningful touches – like a memorial wall, donor recognition, and beautifully crafted furnishings. We’re deeply grateful to all who have contributed to making our space feel truly sacred.
We are proud to be the caretakers of a Sefer Torah (Torah scroll) that was originally from the Jewish town of Brno in the former Czechoslovakia. Many such scrolls were seized by the Nazis and later became part of the Memorial Scrolls Trust collection. We keep our Czech Torah safe in our ark and read from it in memory of the Holocaust victims of Brno and other Jewish communities.
We are honored to have a Czech Torah Scroll on permanent loan from the Memorial Scrolls Trust. This scroll is a powerful reminder of the resilience of Jewish communities lost in the Holocaust, and it brings deep meaning to our congregation. We extend our heartfelt gratitude to the Memorial Scrolls Trust for entrusting us with this treasured piece of history, allowing us to keep its memory alive through continued use in our community.
The Czech Torah Scrolls, including the one at Temple Kol Ami in Vaughan, Ontario, are part of an extraordinary story of survival and resilience from World War II. These Torah scrolls originally belonged to Jewish communities across Czechoslovakia, which were decimated during the Holocaust. In the early 1940s, as Nazi forces occupied Czechoslovakia, synagogues, Jewish artifacts, and Torah scrolls were systematically confiscated and looted.
Many of these scrolls were gathered by the Nazis in Prague, who had a disturbing plan to create a “Museum of an Extinct Race” showcasing artifacts from Jewish communities they planned to obliterate. The scrolls, along with other religious items, were cataloged and stored in Prague’s Jewish Museum under harsh conditions, where they sat for decades, largely forgotten.
In the 1960s, the Torah scrolls were rediscovered in poor condition, and the Memorial Scrolls Trust (MST) in London, England, arranged for 1,564 scrolls to be brought to the Westminster Synagogue in London. The MST restored many of these scrolls and began loaning them to synagogues around the world, including Temple Kol Ami, to preserve the memory of the lost Czech Jewish communities and ensure that these Torahs could continue to be used in Jewish life.
Kol Ami treasures this scroll, using it in services and education to honor the memory of those lost, and the communities it represents.
Our Torah covers, created by artist Jeanette Kuvin Oren, are rich in symbolism and beauty. Hand-dyed silk flows from dawn to night in vibrant hues, grounded by earth tones. A windswept olive tree, crafted from ultra-suede, wraps each scroll – “swaying to the rhythms of our people.”
Woven into the design are four Hebrew phrases, each tucked within the branches, reflecting the pillars of Jewish life through the word Kol (voice):
These covers don’t just protect our scrolls – they tell our story, honoring the voices of generations and inspiring us as a living community.