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av Sorotzkin stayed personally involved throughout the process, traveling to India twice to visit the workshops, encouraging craftsmen and explaining the aron kodesh’s purpose. The visit coincided with Taanis Esther, and he and some talmidim who accompanied him drove six hours to reach a Chabad house in New Delhi, only to arrive during a hachnassas sefer Torah. True to form, the Israeli rosh yeshivah danced through the colorful streets of India’s capital with the sefer Torah, singing and waving as if he were back in Bnei Brak.

Once the different components were ready, transporting them was its own saga. Most of the silverwork traveled by sea. What should have been a month-long voyage stretched to 110 days, delayed by disruptions due to the war in Gaza and Houthi attacks in the Red Sea. When the material finally reached Israel, the workers first assembled the aron kodesh at Amash, confirming every piece was in place, and then dismantled it and reassembled it in the beis medrash.

On Shavuos of last year, talmidim and rabbanim carried the sifrei Torah into the aron kodesh amid dancing and song. Days later, the yeshivah celebrated its dedication. An American Bobover chassid dedicated the aron kodesh in memory of the Bobover Rebbe, Rav Shlomo Halberstam ztz”l, and his name crowns it in gold.

Today, the aron kodesh attracts regular visitors.

“Do you know how many people stop in to see it — and then sit down with a chavrusa?” Rav Sorotzkin asks. “It opened incredible kiruv opportunities. Some of the biggest leftists in Eretz Yisrael come, and they end up learning with bnei Torah for the first time — out of kavod.” He smiles. “And yes, it’s a fundraising opportunity, too. We sold the dedication of the mezuzah, and the dedications of every sefer Torah and Nach we placed inside. After expenses, we brought in $21 million for the yeshivah.”

For Rav Sorotzkin, though, the numbers — whether measured in visitors or dollars — are only part of the story. What matters most is what those visitors and donors encounter when they walk through the doors: a palpable sense of awe, a living expression of kevod haTorah.

“Kevod haTorah isn’t ancillary to Torah,” he insists. “It’s a chelek of Torah itself!”

Ruins Rebuilt

Name: Churvah Shul

Location: Old City of Jerusalem

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he Churvah Shul, standing proudly in the Old City of Jerusalem just meters away from the Kosel Hamaaravi, is instantly recognizable by its magnificent dome and soaring window arches and the sense of presence it lends the Jewish Quarter. Yet even more dominant than its physical magnitude is its historical one: Perhaps no other shul in the world is pressed into Jewish conscience as this one, which symbolizes the tumultuous history of our people in the holiest of lands — a cycle of growth, setbacks caused by enemies seeking to halt the Jewish presence, and an irrepressible drive to rebuild.

Walk inside the storied shul on a regular day and you’ll see men learning — many of them wearing tefillin per the minhag of Rav Eliyahu Zilberman, the shul’s rav. They diligently plow through Tanach, Gemara, and poskim as per the famous “Zilberman mehalech” of learning, one that emphasizes voluminous amounts of Torah study.

There are chandeliers, stained-glass windows, and circular paintings the under the barrel dome, depicting Migdal Dovid, Kever Rochel, the Kinneret, and Mearas Hamachpeilah in soft, calming pastels. Yet for all the decorative features, the interior remains deliberately restrained to a minimalistic backdrop, designed so that all eyes are drawn to the true centerpiece: the aron kodesh that dominates the room, and literally takes up the entire eastern wall.

The wall itself is partially raw and unfinished, symbolizing the tension of rebuilding a shul even as the Makom Hamikdash lies in ruins. The base of the aron kodesh, built of white Jerusalem stone and polished marble, rises from a series of tall, rounded pillars that stand in rows and tiers, almost like a grand palace facade, each one fluted and decorated, giving a rhythm and strength to the design. Between the pillars are arched recesses and panels, some edged with gold ornamentation that gleams against the pale stone. Higher up, the tiers narrow, leading the eye upward until they meet in a grand sculpted crown that sits at the very top — a symbolic kesser Torah, crown of Torah.

Covering the aron kodesh’s opening is a rich velvet, deep-blue paroches, declaring a pasuk so central to everything the shul symbolizes: Im eshkacheich Yerushalayim, tishkach yemini. When it’s drawn back, the wooden doors of the aron kodesh are revealed. Behind them are rows of carefully arranged compartments, polished wood chambers that hold the sifrei Torah, each crowned with silver or gold rimonim and breastplates. The entire eastern wall is built as one continuous piece with the aron kodesh, so that the aron kodesh seems to grow out of the building itself. It’s not furniture, but architecture — giving the impression that the entire shul is oriented toward this one, magnificent centerpiece.

The shul’s roots go back to the early 1700s, when a small group of Ashkenazi Jews, followers of Rav Yehudah HaChassid, came to settle in Jerusalem. The group, consisting of pious and pure Yidden full of ambition, began constructing a shul. But the community was small, money ran out, and debts piled up. The project collapsed, and soon the Ottoman authorities demolished the unfinished walls. For more than a century, the site was left as a ruin, thus earning the name Churvah.

In 1812, the Ashkenazi community in Jerusalem began to grow, and its leaders decided it was time to bring the Churvah back to life. One of the primary pioneers of the effort was a Yid by the name of Rabbi Avraham Shlomo Zalman Zoref, who traveled abroad to receive permission to rebuild from the sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Local Arabs were incensed and in 1851, just a few years after Rav Zoref obtained the necessary permits to rebuild the shul, he became the first Jewish victim of Arab terror in the Holy Land, after an Arab bludgeoned him to death one morning as he made his way to Shacharis.

After his murder, Rav Zoref’s children continued his work, and in 1864, the shul was finally completed. This time it wasn’t a small neighborhood shul. It was a grand, impressive building, designed in a style influenced by European architecture of the time, which in and of itself represented a departure from the designs that were prominent in the frum world at the time. Nesanel Eisenman, a popular tour guide in Eretz Yisrael (and son of Mishpacha columnist Rabbi Ron Yitzchok Eisenman) and a tenth-generation descendant of Rav Zoref, explained that the innovative design was done more for political reasons than an appreciation for European taste. In what may have been an early case of legal bribery to a zoning official, the Jews had hired the Assad Effendi, the Sultan’s official architect (who, like many architects of his day had been trained in the classical European fashion) to design the shul, thus providing an incentive to those in the Sultan’s inner circle to approve the project.

No matter the reasoning, the end result was breathtaking. The large central dome could be seen from all over the Old City, and inside, the sanctuary was magnificent, with tall pillars, arches, and an enormous aron kodesh at its front.

The Churvah quickly became the main synagogue for Ashkenazi Jews in Jerusalem. It wasn’t just a beis knesses, it was also a center of community life. Travelers and dignitaries who visited the city would often be taken there to see the grandeur of Jewish life in Jerusalem, and inside, the shul pulsated with Torah. The bar mitzvah of a young Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, who had arrived in Palestine at the tender young age of 12 from Šiauliai, Lithuania, was held at the Churvah in 1923. And while his ceaseless Torah learning developed Rav Elyashiv into the great gaon that he eventually became, he related that an incident outside the shul gave him a certain siyata d’Shmaya in his Torah learning.

In 1933, the great Chazzan Yossele Rosenblatt was giving a concert at the Churvah, and Rav Elyashiv, who enjoyed quality niggunim, planned on attending the performance. He made his way down the cobblestone streets of the Old City, but just before he reached the Churvah Shul, he reconsidered: How could he spend an hour listening to a chazzan when he could spend that same time learning? Making an about-face, he headed in the opposite direction as the crowd, and made his way back to his humble beis medrash. When recounting this incident, Rav Elyashiv said that afterward, he experienced far greater success in his Torah learning than he had previously, and he attributed much of what he became to that seemingly simple decision.

History was not kind to the Churvah. During the 1948 War of Independence, when the Jewish Quarter came under heavy siege, the shul, a symbol of the Jewish presence in the Old City, became a target. After days of fierce fighting, the Jordanians captured the area. An Arab explosives expert, Fawzi el-Kutub, was specifically tasked with destroying the Churvah Shul, and on May 27, 1948, under orders from Jordanian Arab Legion commander Abdullah el-Tell, el-Kutub placed a 200-liter barrel filled with explosives against the synagogue’s wall.

The explosion created a breach, allowing Legionnaires to enter, and eventually reduced the building — together with the adjacent Etz Chaim Yeshivah — to ruins. The Arab flag flying over the Old City skyline signaled the Legion’s triumph. The name Churvah once again seemed painfully fitting. But not for long.

In 1967, the Israeli Army had a miraculous victory and retook the Old City. There was jubilance in the air. “Har Habayis b’yadeinu —Har Habayis is in our hands!” the call triumphantly rang out. The Kosel Hamaaravi was once again open for tefillos, and Jews could resettle their city. As Jews rejoiced, one question kept surfacing in their minds: Can we rebuild our beloved shul?

It would take another four decades for it to happen. There were debates about how it should be done: Should the ruins be preserved as a memorial? Should it be built in a completely new design or should the shul be rebuilt as it had looked in the 19th century? Should Jerusalem innovate or should it celebrate its tradition? The debate dragged, the municipalities’ promised funding that didn’t materialize and the project stalled. In 1977, a single stone arch was built, as if to promise passerby: The shul will be rebuilt, and the process is underway.

In the early 2000s, the decision was finally made to reconstruct the Churvah in its full 19th-century glory. Jerusalem architect Nahum Meltzer was commissioned for the project, and teams of stonemasons, artisans, and preservationists set to work under his eye, quarrying fresh Jerusalem stone but shaping it to match the rhythm of Assad Effendi’s 19th-century design. The dome was rebuilt tier by tier, ribs of steel hidden beneath hand-cut stone, until the silhouette that once defined the Jewish Quarter rose again. Nessim Gaon, a Sudan-born trader who made his fortune in commodities and luxury hotels, financed the project.

By 2010, the job was complete. The Jewish Quarter’s beloved shul had finally returned to its sacred space.

On the day that it was dedicated, Arabs kicked and screamed in protest at the “provocation.” American diplomats chided the Israelis for their insensitivity to the world community. And hundreds of old-time Yerushalmi Jews, unaware and unperturbed at the international brouhaha their little shul had created, joined once again to dance the sifrei Torah in. The dedication was followed by Minchah, and when the chazzan reached the words, “Baruch Atah Hashem Boneh Yerushalayim,” a collective “Amen” resounded through the cavernous shul, carrying with it the memory of centuries of loss and the triumph of return.

Majesty on a Hilltop

Name: Ponevezh Yeshiva

Location: Bnei Brak

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erhaps the most famous aron kodesh in the world is the golden one in the Ponevezh Yeshiva in Bnei Brak. The iconic photo of Rav Shach ztz”l, his raised hands and fiery expression belying his advanced age, was taken in front of the famed aron kodesh, bringing the gilded background to Jewish homes the world over.

While the aron kodesh projects an aura of grandeur, a visitor to the yeshivah may be disappointed by the incongruous setting. The beis medrash is objectively unremarkable, even restrained. There are rows of wooden shtenders and benches lining the plain white-tiled floor. The walls are two-toned: simple marble panels covering the lower part of the wall, and above them, plaster rising white and bare. And then, at the front, seemingly out of place, is that gilded, baroque structure nearly reaching the ceiling, carved centuries ago in Italy and glowing with fresh gold.

There is a story behind the magnificent aron kodesh, but it’s more than the story of a gorgeous work of art. It’s a story that stretches from Mantua to Bnei Brak, from a crumbling European synagogue to the Torah world rebuilt from ashes, and most of all, it’s the story of the man who brought it here: the Ponevezher Rav, Rav Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman ztz”l, the legendary gadol whose far-reaching vision turned him into one of the greatest builders of Torah in recent history.

Rav Kahaneman was born in 1886 in the Lithuanian town of Kuhl, and studied in the great yeshivos of Telz and Radin, under the tutelage of the Chofetz Chaim. In 1911 he accepted the rabbanus of Ponevezh, where he threw his energies into building up the community. He founded schools for boys and girls, strengthened local yeshivos, and established institutions of tzedakah and chesed. He worked tirelessly to fundraise and advocate for Jewish communities, his work taking him across Europe.

After the devastation of the war, he settled in Eretz Yisrael and set his sights on rebuilding what had been lost. In 1944, on a hilltop in Bnei Brak, he founded the Ponevezh Yeshivah, and from then on, his name would forever be linked to the rebirth of the Lithuanian yeshivah world. (Famously, when the Rav detailed his ideas to Chief Rabbi Rav Yitzchok Herzog, Rav Herzog considered the plan and then gently told him, “You’re dreaming.”

“I might be dreaming, but that doesn’t mean I’m sleeping,” was Rav Kahaneman’s comeback.)

The Ponevezh aron kodesh predates the yeshivah by over three centuries. It was first built in 1635 for the Scuola Grande Italiana, a historic synagogue in Mantua, the city that ranked as a major center of Italian Jewry and one of the most important in Renaissance Italy. Mantua was ruled by the Gonzagas, the ducal family who presided the city for nearly four centuries. The Gonzagas were pragmatic rulers: They needed the literate Jews of Mantua for their financial, medical, and artisanal skills, and were willing to extend patronage and protection in return. The resulting relationship was mutually beneficial: The Jews provided their services and in exchange were granted a measure of stability and security, even while they were confined to the ghetto.

By the 17th century, Mantua’s Jews numbered several thousand and maintained a network of batei knesses, each aligned with a different nusach — Italian, Ashkenazic, Sephardic. The Scuola Grande Italiana was the flagship shul, and its aron kodesh reflected both the community’s prosperity and its desire to anchor itself in the cultural idiom of the time. Baroque style, with its marble, columns, and gilded detail, was the visual language of dignity and power in Italy, and even as the Jews of Mantua were restricted to the ghetto, they created an interior world of grandeur that spoke to their standing and reverence for Torah. An inscription on its central panel tells us it was refurbished in 1750, in pure Italian baroque style: tall columns, swirling foliage, a crown at the top, all covered in gold leaf.

Like other Italian arks of its time, it had some quirks. The paroches was not hung outside but tucked behind the doors, so the facade would never be hidden. And in a particularly Italian touch, two carved wooden seats flanked the aron kodesh, originally reserved for the kehillah leaders.

For centuries, the aron kodesh stood watch over Mantua’s Jewish community as a symbol of pride. But as the kehillah declined in the 20th century, the synagogue closed and the ark sat neglected. By the 1950s, it was worm-eaten and crumbling, its gold having lost its luster and the glory it once represented shrunken to, as Abie Rottenberg would have it, a mere echo of the past. In the end, it wasn’t a bold Moishele the shamesh, but a Dr. Umberto (Shlomo) Nahon, a prewar figure of the Italian Zionist intelligentsia who later settled in Jerusalem, who rescued the aron kodesh from its cellar, dark and cold.

Dr. Nahon devoted himself to rescuing Italy’s abandoned synagogues and their aronei kodesh, and the Mantua one was the crowning jewel of his efforts. (Today, a stone’s throw from Zion Square, inside the former Schmidt Compound, stands the U. Nahon Museum of Italian Jewish Art, quietly anchoring a pocket of Italian Jewish memories). A team, led by Israeli restorer Ran Shinar and financed by Ludwig Jesselson, a German-born Jewish philanthropist and commodities magnate, regilded and refreshed the intricate wooden carvings, returning the aron kodesh to its original splendor.

Exactly how the Italian aron kodesh found its way to the hilltop of Ponevezh after Dr. Nahon facilitated its restoration is not fully documented. The records are silent, and accounts differ as to whether the yeshivah leadership actively sought it out or if it was offered to them as a natural destination for such a centerpiece after its intended home (a beis knesses in Tel Aviv) couldn’t house the aron kodesh — but by the early 1960s, it stood gleaming in place, perfectly filling the niche that had been prepared.

Over time, the aron kodesh became inseparable from Ponevezh’s identity. Ponevezh became the crucible of Torah leadership, sending forth leaders such as Rav Elazar Menachem Mann Shach, Rav Michel Yehudah Lefkowitz, Rav Aharon Leib Steinman, and Rav Gershon Eidelstein zichronam shel tzaddikim livrachah. For half a century, the pulse of Klal Yisrael was set by the leadership emanating from the Ponevezh beis medrash. In photograph after photograph of those gedolim, the golden aron kodesh towers silently in the background, etched into our collective psyche.

By now, the aron kodesh’s distinctive design has been copied in batei medrash across Israel, and the Skverer Beis Medrash completed a nearly perfect replica of the flagship aron kodesh in its own beis medrash in Lakewood in 2017.

The Ponevezher Rav was renowned for his sweeping vision, his refusal to compromise, and his ability to see a yeshivah on a bare hill when no one else could. He passed away in 1969, but the yeshivah, with its golden aron kodesh, remains an enduring legacy.

Atop the aron kodesh, the Italian designers placed a pasuk, “L’romeim es Beis Elokeinu — to exalt the House of Hashem” (Ezra 9:9). The pasuk talks about the opportunity to finally raise the House of Hashem, after 70 years of galus. It’s hard to imagine another pasuk that could so appropriately convey the aura of romemus shining forth from this majestic edifice and its founder, who suffered through a devastating churban, but invigorated himself with purpose and passion to exalt Hashem and all that is beloved to Him.

“L’romeim es Beis Elokeinu!”

Arising from the Ashes

Name: Belz Beis Medrash

Location: Romema, Yerushalayim

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you take a look around Jerusalem at night as you enter the city, and lift your eyes to the ridge right above Romema, a colossal block of gleaming, floodlit Jerusalem stone rises above the golden skyline, dominating and dwarfing the hillside. Its sheer bulk and geometric lines overpower the surrounding apartment blocks, a massive citadel of stone that anchors the western horizon. From almost any angle at the city’s entrance, the eye is pulled toward the glowing facade, a landmark as immovable and commanding as the ridge it crowns.

Legend has it that when former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice flew to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv via chopper on an official state visit, the Jerusalem skyline came into view of the VIP aircraft just as the sun set. The Holy City was bathed in its golden, ethereal glow and one building towered above. The senior US stateswoman turned to Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, who was accompanying her for the ride. “Is that the Knesset?” she asked in awe.

But Olmert shook his head. The glowing fortress wasn’t the seat of the government; it was the beis medrash of Belz — the chassidus that rose from the ashes of Europe and was transplanted to Jerusalem, rebuilding with a grandeur that turned its beis medrash into a landmark of the city itself.

Belz traces its roots back to the early 1800s in the town of Belz, Galicia, (a region of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, today split between Poland and Ukraine, with the town of Belz itself lying just inside Ukraine’s western border) where Rav Shalom Rokeach, the “Sar Shalom,” a talmid of the famed Chozeh of Lublin founded the chassidus and built a beis medrash that became one of the largest and most influential in Eastern Europe. For generations, Belz thrived as a center of Torah, tefillah, and chassidishe life, with tens of thousands of followers across Galicia, Hungary, and beyond.

Together with most of European Jewry, much of the Belzer community perished in the Holocaust, and the magnificent beis medrash, completed in 1843 and famed for its sheer size and majesty, was destroyed. Yet the dynasty survived. In one of the most dramatic Holocaust survival sagas, the previous (and fourth) Rebbe, Rav Aharon Rokeach, known as the “Belzer Ruv” — or even “Reb Aharon HaKadosh” — escaped Nazi Europe. He journeyed on a harrowing peregrination through Poland and Hungary, smuggled from hiding place to hiding place by devoted chassidim who risked their lives for him.

Disguised and traveling on false papers, he and his half brother Rav Mordechai of Bilgoray crossed into Turkey and from there reached Eretz Yisrael just weeks before Hungary’s Jews were deported to Auschwitz. When the Rebbe reached the Haifa port in February of 1944, he was met by Chief Rabbi Yitzchak Herzog and throngs of chassidim, in a searingly emotional moment that marked both survival and promise.

The Eretz Yisrael branch of Belz began modestly, with the fourth Rebbe leading his small circle of survivors from a simple beis medrash, first on Rechov Achad Ha’am in Tel Aviv and then on Rechov Chana in Jerusalem. But the postwar years saw the chassidus slowly rebuild, drawing in new generations of chassidim and creating chadarim, kollelim, and communal institutions.

It was the fourth Rebbe, Rav Aharon, who saved Belz from destruction; the fifth Rebbe, Rav Yissachar Dov, rebuilt it into a powerhouse. After Rav Aharon’s passing in 1957, his nephew Rav Yissachar Dov Rokeach, the fifth and current Rebbe, assumed leadership. Under his dynamic leadership, Belz expanded dramatically, establishing a vibrant chassidishe community in the Kiryas Belz neighborhood of Jerusalem and around the globe. The crowning symbol of this rebirth was the decision to construct a new beis medrash hagadol, echoing the grandeur of the original in Galicia. Completed in 2000 after more than a decade of construction, the vast structure is a towering declaration that Belz, once nearly extinguished, has been reborn in majestic form at the heart of the Jewish world.

In a physical testament to how Belz has transformed, the remarkably small, simple and spartan wooden shtender and chair of the fourth Rebbe, Rav Aharon of Belz, stand preserved at the front of the new beis medrash in a glass case, just beside the aron kodesh. The chair is the only one the Rebbe sat on in Eretz Yisrael. It would accompany him from Tel Aviv to Yerushalayim (his driver would hoist it onto the roof of the vehicle before making the trip), and gabbaim would carry the chair from the tish to tefillos to his home. Now, that sacred and humble seat of a Rebbe who led his chassidim from a small room on Rechov Chana faces an aron kodesh of staggering scale — and what an aron kodesh it is.

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ising 12 meters (39 feet) high, weighing more than 20 tons, and hand-carved from Brazilian wood, the Belz aron kodesh dominates its 3,000-seat beis medrash, framed by its tall, arched windows and flanked by golden menorahs. It even earned international recognition when it was entered into Guinness World Records as the largest aron kodesh (“ark,” in their parlance) in the world — which, of course, doesn’t comment on its immense spiritual dimensions. The Rebbe, who personally designed and oversaw each detail of the beis medrash, insisted on dimensions and details that carried layers of symbolism, some apparent to chassidim and some shrouded in mystery, but all accepted just the same by his faithful flock.

Its central arch is framed by clusters of fluted wooden columns and bordered with dense floral carvings, while the interior doors are covered with an intricate lattice of gold-toned metalwork, crowned with a central kesser Torah. In contrast to the standard aronei kodesh around the world, this one is designed with no words or inscriptions on the exterior.

Rabbi Yechezkel Friedman, a Belzer chassid who gives tours of the shul to visiting groups, explains. “Just like when someone who is finished learning doesn’t leave the sefer open out of respect for the sefer, so as not leave it exposed, the Rebbe insisted that there be no pesukim on the aron kodesh, just this floral design.” (Inside the aron kodesh, a golden “Lamnatzeiach” is printed across both interior doors, visible only to the sifrei Torah.) The paroches is woven to appear as a continuation of the aron kodesh itself, so that when it’s drawn, the wall appears as a single, uninterrupted structure.

The sifrei Torah in this aron kodesh lie flat, in accordance with the opinion of Rabbeinu Tam. (Rashi holds that a sefer Torah should be placed upright in the aron kodesh, reflecting kevod haTorah, while Rabbeinu Tam maintains it should lie horizontally, based on how the Luchos and Torah were stored in the original Aron Hakodesh in the Mishkan.)

“That’s how it was in the original Belzer beis medrash in Galicia,” said Rabbi Friedman. “The ershte (first) Rebbe — the Sar Shalom — wanted that at least one shul in the world should follow the shitah of Rabbeinu Tam.” Rabbi Friedman adds that there is a mesorah among Belzer chassidim that a mystical connection exists between the Sar Shalom and Rabbeinu Tam.

The sifrei Torah lie on racks, and though the aron kodesh can hold up to 70 sifrei Torah, there are currently only a dozen inside. One of those 12 sifrei Torah is the sole surviving sefer Torah from the original Belz in Galicia. It is used only on the holiest days of the year: Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Hoshana Rabbah, and Purim, and it is read by the Rebbe himself, who serves as baal korei on those awesome days.

The aron kodesh is gated off with elegant, low golden fences that extend across the platform, echoing the lattice motif, reinforcing yet again that one is entering sacred space. Beyond the gate, a set of six white marble stairs lead to the platform. “The concrete for these steps was poured by the Rebbe himself,” says Rabbi Friedman. After alighting the six marble steps, one steps onto a platform that spans the width of the aron kodesh.

On the platform there is yet another gate that sections off two sets of three wooden steps that lead to the aron kodesh itself. Yet none of the steps are directly in front of it, ensuring that the one honored with pesichah doesn’t turn his back to the aron kodesh.

Rabbi Friedman explains that the steps weren’t built purely for function, but rather that they have a deeper layer of meaning. On each side, there are ten in total — six marble, three wooden, and the final shelf within the aron itself — corresponding to the Ten Sefiros of Kabbalah, a deliberate design that turns every ascent into a spiritual one.

The ruchniyus overlay extends beyond the steps; every detail in the great beis medrash carries meaning. The ornate chandeliers, for example, each hold 112 bulbs — a number tied to three Names of Hashem. Ninety-six spotlights line the vaulted ceiling, a multiple of 24, echoing another one of the Sheimos of Hashem. The two banks of 18 lights across the front correspond to 36, the amount of hours in which the world was suffused with the Ohr Haganuz, the hidden primordial light, as well as the 36 candles lit over Chanukah. Even the windows are grouped in sets of 12, each set evoking the shevatim.

Back when the original Belz shul in Galicia was constructed, the Sar Shalom took personal responsibility for building the great edifice, sparing neither effort nor money during the 15-year construction period. He oversaw the work down to its smallest detail, from choosing the orientation of the building to pouring the cement with his own hands, ensuring that every aspect reflected kevod haTorah. Day after day, in rain and snow, through the bitter cold of the Ukrainian winters, the Sar Shalom stood at the site, taking an active part in the building of his shul.

Nearly two centuries later, his successor would do the same in Jerusalem — personally guiding and overseeing every aspect of construction of the new beis medrash for Belz. He oversaw every detail of the building, and when it came to the aron kodesh, the Rebbe did not only approve blueprints; he sketched the actual design, adjusted the plans, and personally selected the team that would be tasked with constructing it.

More importantly, the Rebbe saw to it that the building itself was imbued with kedushah. The bricks embedded in the mizrach wall behind the aron kodesh are bricks that were dug out of the foundation of the original shul in Belz, and the cement for the remainder of the mammoth structure was poured by two chassidim appointed by the Rebbe, each of whom had to immerse in the mikveh, give tzedakah, and recite special tefillos both before and while they were pouring the cement.

Two hundred years separate Galicia from Jerusalem, but in the resonance of this beis medrash, the distance collapses. What was once lost has been replanted, what was threatened has been renewed. The aron kodesh rises not only as a centerpiece of the shul, but as a monument to the spirit of Belz: unbroken, unyielding, and eternal.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1081)