TRANSCRIPT

Interview of Eddie Duke by Marlene Gamble July, 2003

The thing that is interesting about the synagogue actually was the Aron Hakodesh. Now every synagogue has to have a sort of a cupboard really, is all it is, to contain the scrolls of the law. Now because we didn't have one and knew we would, and usually this is built as sort of an elaborate cupboard, even though it may be a very simple one. It has a nice door on it or will have nice curtains on it. There's something that make(s) you think that this is a very special thing as described in the Bible. How the children of Israel carried the, this Aron Hakodesh, this whatever it was, it contained the scrolls of the law and they carried it on their shoulders all through the deserts for many years.

So Mr. Scott comes up with the idea, he says, "You know," he says, "I have a friend in Montreal who is the secretary of a Romanian synagogue and that synagogue is being amalgamated with another synagogue and they don't know what to do with all the things that are in that synagogue." He says, "If you authorize me to hire a truck, and one thing and another, we can go to the synagogue and to Montreal and I'm pretty sure," he says, "they will be glad to give me some of those things rather than us having to, having to buy them." Well he went to Montreal. He took a big truck and he brought back this Aron Hakodesh, which was installed in our synagogue and it came out of a much larger building and it took up virtually half the space.

Now this Aron Hakodesh, I don't know who made it. Nobody really knows. But it was a work of art by the carpenters who had built it actually. And it was high. It went right to the top of our ceiling. We had a high ceiling fortunately and we could accommodate it. And there were the Ten Commandments, and there were the Two Lions of Judah supporting the Ten Commandments. And we didn't perhaps realize what a gem we had until finally we had a visitor one day from the Canadian Jewish Congress who was in charge of Jewish archives in Toronto. And he then declared it to be the finest example of a, of an Aron Hakodesh in the country, that any others that were left had been destroyed or weren't, but this was the only one that was still left "intact" of that particular era. So we then knew that we had a gem and we, we took good care of it.

So Mr. Scott brought back this beautiful Aron Hakodesh and he brought back chairs, theatre-type seats, and he brought back the bima, which had wrought iron decorations going all around it. They were actually, they were typical of actually the uh, the decorations around the bima, I, were typical of a lot of the railings that we would see on some of the balconies in Montreal going up to the old homes, probably came from the same ironworks, you know. But it was a very beautiful thing and it was installed and there were seats put around it, you know. And we, we used it.