The Albert & Temmy Latner Forest Hill Jewish Centre in Toronto will be holding a “Maritime Torah Dedication Weekend,” to celebrate the arrival of a Torah that has come from away.

The Torah was originally housed in the arc at the Sons of Israel Congregation in Glace Bay, N.S., a small town on Cape Breton Island. When that shul closed in 2010, the Torah needed a permanent home.

The Simon family – who are originally from Glace Bay – purchased it and covered the restoration costs. They are donating it to the Forest Hill Jewish Centre. The official dedication, which is in memory of Phil and Allan Simon – a father and son from Glace bay who were both dentists – takes place on Dec. 8. A special Kiddish will follow Shabbat services.

Rabbi Elie Karfunkel kicks off the Maritime weekend at his home at 8 p.m. on Dec. 6. “We’re so honoured to have this weekend and to continue the legacy of all the founders of the Glace Bay community,” he said.

“Receiving the Torah from one of the greatest Jewish communities in Canada and having so many of those congregants in our community bodes so well for us because their positive Torah-healthy attitude is infectious to everyone in our broader community.”

This Maritime Torah is the last vestige of the Sons of Israel Congregation, which was founded in 1901. When the town’s baby-boomer generation left for university, most of them did not return and the Jewish community there gradually dwindled. By 2010, there were no longer enough people for a minyan.

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Speaking on behalf of his brothers, Bruce and Gary Simon, Mark Simon, a dentist who grew up in Glace Bay, explained that purchasing the Torah was important for them. “It was the opportune time to hold onto a piece of Glace Bay,” he said.

He spoke about the centrality of the synagogue in the close-knit community of Glace Bay and in his own family. “Friday night and Saturday morning, you went to shul,” he said.

His father, Phil Simon, was born in Glace Bay and was the shul’s president for 17 years, as well as the baal korei, the person who reads the Torah for the community.

The family chose the Forest Hill Jewish Centre because it’s an Orthodox shul like the Sons of Israel and some of its members are originally from Glace Bay.

Simon said the family set a random date for the Torah dedication. “The date just so happens to fall on my father’s yahrzeit – Dec. 7 to Dec 8. How ironic is that?”

The odyssey of the Sons of Israel Torah began with Arthur Zilbert, a retired obstetrician and gynecologist who is originally from Glace Bay. After practising medicine in Halifax, he moved to Toronto to join his children in 2016.

About seven months ago, he received a phone call from the remaining few members of the Sons of Israel Congregation: they asked him to sell their two Torahs to pay for the upkeep of their cemetery.

“They said, ‘We’re sending you two Torahs. Sell them,’ ” Zilbert recounted. “I said, ‘Don’t send them before I make some inquiries of what to do.’ They said, ‘The Torahs are on the way.’ ”

They had not been used for 20 years, so Zilbert asked Rabbi Aaron Zacks to appraise their value and the cost of their repair.

Then Zilbert sent out emails across the country to former Glace Bay residents, to notify them about the availability of the Torahs. “A lot of people inquired about being given the Torahs, rather than buying them,” he said.

He held an auction and said that the Simon family – who had lived across the street from him in Glace Bay – had the highest bid for the two Torahs. “We grew up together. Our families were very close,” Zilbert added.

In fact, Zilbert’s father was always up on the bimah alongside Phil Simon when he read from the Torah.

The Simons have not yet chosen a home for the second Torah and so it will remain at the Forest Hill Jewish Centre for now.

Zilbert, who’s a member there, said that services at the centre will be extra special “knowing that there’s a piece of Glace Bay there and that the shul has a piece of my youth.”