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When a priest once asked Rabbi Chaim Lobel of Young Israel of Aberdeen how he knew the Torah was written by God, Lobel responded with the simple, "My father told me."

The priest was expecting more complex intellectual proofs or arguments, Lobel said on April 25 at a re-dedication ceremony for Young Israel's 120-year-old Torah scroll, but what he didn't understand was the value Judaism places on passing down traditions from one generation to another for more than 3,000 years.

Judaism's emphasis on respecting the past is what makes the necessary maintenance of Torah scrolls over time a uniquely personal experience, Lobel explained.

"It is incumbent upon us to keep this sefer Torah going for eternity," Lobel told the crowd. "It's not only important for the sefer Torah itself, but it's also important in terms of our own feelings."

"By being here, being present, being associated, involving yourself, alone makes you have that feeling [of] 'this is my Sefer Torah'," he said.

One of three Torahs at Young Israel, the re-dedicated scroll was donated to the synagogue 25 years ago by Congregation Shaare Hatikvah in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, the childhood shul of Steven Dublon, Young Israel's president. Lobel said the repairs for the rededication consisted of darkening letters that started to turn from black to red. Written in 1890, the Torah's age means ink can no longer absorb into its parchment, he said.

"It's like writing on a piece of glass," Lobel said, noting that this type of maintenance is necessary for a Torah every 15 years.

The Torah contains a number of features that separate it from most scrolls. In the style of the Rambam, Maimonides, the text contains indenting from the beginning of lines for closed segments, something "that is unheard of today" for other scrolls, Lobel explained. Also in the Rambam tradition, the text skips lines for open segments, he said.

In the German-Jewish style, the Torah contains some artistic versions of the letter peh and backwards versions of the letter nun within the text; in other Torahs, the backwards nun is only seen outside the text to demarcate episodes that seem out of place, Lobel said. Due to these features, the first sofer (scribe) Lobel approached about the job actually refused to fix the Torah, he said.

The Torah is also taller than most scrolls with 60 lines per column, compared with 42 in one of Young Israel's other Torahs, and contains an extra space at the end of each verse to let the ba'al koreh (chanter) know when to pause. Though the scroll looks daunting for hagbah -- ritual lifting -- because of its height, its light parchment makes it anything but difficult to pick up.

"It's like Hashem is lifting it up for us," said Richard Berg, a past synagogue president.

Dublon recalled that 25 years ago, Shaare Hatikvah had a surplus of Torahs and Young Israel needed one during its formative years. The scroll, Dublon said, was rescued from the Holocaust, like many Torahs at German-Jewish synagogues.

"They were nice enough to give it to us because we were just starting out," Dublon said.

David Tolchin, one of the congregants who sponsored the repairs, said "I try to help my shul in any way possible, because I love it."

Lobel explained that when God asked the nations of the world if they wanted to accept the Torah, each declined because of the Torah's demands: Edom because of the prohibition against murder, Amon and Moab because of adultery, and the Ishmaelites because of stealing. The Jews, however, "took [the Torah] and embraced it, and since then we have been teaching morality to the rest of the world," Lobel said.

The other nations later asked God if they could reconsider and change their behavior, but God said it would be impossible for them to receive the Torah because they have no respect for their forefathers, Lobel said; the Jews, on the other hand, were bound by not only Torah law, but an inextricable connection to their past.

One of the messages of re-dedicating a Torah is that in an era of innovation, "we have to look to see how we can attach ourselves to previous generations," Lobel said.

"It's not time to innovate," he said. "It's time to grasp and hold tight."

The program also included a presentation from Sonia Beker, author of "Symphony On Fire," which chronicles the lives of her parents Max and Fania. Both coming from musical families in Vilna, Lithuania, Max and Fania survived the Holocaust and went on to organize a survivors' orchestra at the St. Ottilien Displaced Persons Camp. The orchestra, the members of which wore outfits resembling the striped uniforms of concentration camp prisoners, was conducted on two occasions by Leonard Bernstein and performed not only for DP camp inmates, but also for the judges of the Nuremberg Trials and Israeli prime ministers David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir.

Beker said her parents "navigated through the Holocaust with music as their lifeline."