[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 21 (Thursday, February 2, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E254]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                         HONORING CAL KLEINMAN

                                 ______


                         HON. GARY L. ACKERMAN

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, February 2, 1995
  Mr. ACKERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to join with the constituents 
of my district in honoring Mr. Cal Kleinman, president of Bennett X-Ray 
Technologies, for his exceptional show of kindness and generosity.
  Showing a remarkable combination of spiritual and physical 
sensitivity, Cal Kleinman traded an $85,000 cutting-edge mammography 
machine for a priceless, 300-year-old Torah--a prayer scroll containing 
the first five books of the Old Testament--that for 50 years had been 
lying in the basement of a drug-store in a small town less than a mile 
from the Auschwitz concentration camp. The town desperately needed the 
medical equipment, but had no way to pay for it. The only thing it had 
to offer were 18 Torah scrolls that had lain unnoticed since the defeat 
of Nazi Germany at the end of World War II. Mr. Kleinman jumped at the 
opportunity to help the developing country and to gain the Torah for 
his temple.
  Through a complex network of deals and negotiations that brought the 
scroll to New York via Rome, Chicago, and Cincinnati, the first Torah 
scroll arrived in New York on January 30, 1995. Its permanent home will 
be Temple Beth Torah in Melville.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask all my colleagues in the House of Representatives 
to join me in honoring Mr. Cal Kleinman for his incredible act of 
benevolence.


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