To an Hasidic boy at his Bar Mitzvah (coming of age ceremony) receiving and learning about his tefillin is the beginning of a life-long union.
Tefillin (also called phylacteries) are two small leather boxes that contain verses from the Torah. They are worn on the head and on one arm and are held in place by leather straps. Observant men and boys who have had their Bar Mitzvah usually wear tefillin during the morning prayer services.
The tefillin boxes contain verses from the Jewish Torah, each written by a scribe with special ink that is only used on parchment scrolls. The tefillin can be passed down through generations, so the lost ones could be heirlooms.
The tefillin and prayer shawl are kept in a plastic bag and stored in cubicles at the Hasidic Jew’s synagogue. The religious artifacts are considered ‘one’ with the owner. To lose one is unthinkable and all steps are taken to recover a Hasidic Jew’s Tefillin, if lost.
The journey of one lost Tefillin began last week. Tucked away in its Brooklyn Synagogue cubicle, it was leaning out just enough to allow gravity to begin its unusual journey.
Synagogue video shows two men standing near the cubicles. As they walk away the video shows the lone Tefillin-containing bag slowly falling, and dropping into a strategically misplaced garbage can below. (see video at waynetimes.com)
The surveillance video then shows a custodian wrapping up the garbage bag for disposal into a dumpster picked up by a garbage truck.
After realizing a tefillin was missing and viewing the one-in-a-million event, the Hasidic Synagogue prepared for what would become a needle-in-a- haystack adventure.
Frantic calls were made to the synagogue’s national refuse company, Waste Management. Politicians became involved and the truck, time and route were precisely tracked. When the garbage truck dumped its load in the processing center, the load became a slice of 300 tons of New York City waste.
The garbage was loaded into 32 “cans”, large dumpsters each holding between 20 and 30 ton of waste material headed for a train ride out of the City to the Upstate New York High Acres facility located in Perinton and Macedon for land filling.
On average, four train loads per week are received by High Acres from the Big Apple. Through sophisticated tracking of all waste materials, the specific train of 32 cans arrived at High Acres last Friday (11/11).
Calls were immediately made to High Acres Manager Jeff Richardson, through his counterpart in New York City. This lead to another multi-party phone call among all the parties involved in what would become a major search operation.
On Saturday, Jeff immediately purchased every rake, pitch fork and assorted tool he could find in the three county area at Lowes and Home Depot stores.
On the Brooklyn side of the equation, within hours, between $25,000-$30,000 was raised by the Hasidic community to finance the search. A bus carrying 20 synagogue members, friends, including the unlucky owner of the bag of religious material, arrived on the High Acres site early Monday (11/14) morning. Loaded on the bus were additional tools, required safety suits, gloves, masks, hard hats and footwear required for the task ahead.
Waste Management Safety Coordinator, Michael Miller conducted a class on safety procedures and requirements before the search began at 9 a.m.
One load at a time was dumped in a cordoned off area of the landfill, spread out by machines as the tedious search began. Two ‘cans’ can be searched at a time in the divided area, but it is slow, and, at times, disgusting work. The searchers knew to avoid any white garbage bags, concentrating on black commercial trash bags instead. The heat in the plastic safety suits makes the task even more unbearable
By the end of Monday, 9 of the 32 ‘cans’ had been dumped, searched, scooped up and taken to the active part of the landfill.
On Tuesday (11/15) the work began in earnest at 7 a.m. The crews stopped at 4 p.m., not quite halfway through the challenge. The Brooklyn contingent boarded the bus for the trip back home. Many had to return to jobs.
More money was raised, and on Wednesday night, a number of the Hasidic Jewish community flew into the Buffalo airport and were transported to the site at the High Acres to resume the search. According to High Acres Manager Jeff Richardson, the group intends to stay for two days.
At a press conference at 4 p.m. on Thursday, the group, along with members of the Macedon Calvary Chapel Church, announced they had finished the search. Although Synagogue Spokesperson Isaac Neuwirth said they were unsuccessful in the search for the bag, they were thankful to Waste Management and all the volunteers who helped in the search.
Richardson said that through the ordeal, people came to the office at the landfill volunteering to help in the search, and hotels called offering rooms for the Brooklyn searchers.
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