Fire damages Jewish school’s property
While most schools are getting ready for the first day of classes, one small religious school in Albany is instead cleaning up after a suspicious fire.
The Maimonides Hebrew Day School says it lost more than just books and school supplies. It lost its history and a piece of its identity.
Some meaningful books on the Jewish faith are burnt to a crisp.
“This book I’m taking home,” Rabbi Israel Rubin said while holding one charred volume. “This is a unique book, a commentary on the Talmud.”
For Rubin it’s tough to swallow. The school’s been storing supplies and 20 oak pews in a tractor trailer while it builds an addition. But early Monday morning it all went up in flames. Since the trailer was locked it’s being considered suspicious.
“These are pews with a lot of memories, a lot of changes, a lot of history behind them. Now they are not there anymore,” the rabbi said.
Rubin doesn’t think the school was targeted for its Jewish faith. He feels it was probably just young kids up to no good.
But that doesn’t make it any easier. He says the benches were more than 50 years old. They were the original pews when the current school was a synagogue and then a church.
“Sometimes it’s just the financial loss. Sometimes you’ve lost a precious, expensive item that can be replaced. But these can’t be replaced. They had a history, a story behind them and it’s no more,” Rubin said.
The rabbi says its tough picking up the pieces and looking at everything that was lost in the fire, but he says life will go on and so will his school.
“So we don’t have the pews, but we have the children, we have the classrooms. Life will start up and go on anew,” he said.
Rubin says they were set to move the pews on Friday into the addition the school is building.
source: wnyt.com
