"I want you to carry one of the Torah scrolls," Chaplain Major Naditch said to me. I shifted my weapon to my left side and prepared to shoulder the Torah on my right. Was it sacrilegious to hold an instrument of death in one hand and the Tree of Life in the other? Given the circumstances, I didn't think so.

The announcement of this special service for Jewish soldiers had been hush-hush, but it seems as if every Jew in Paris caught wind of it. When I approached the synagogue, police officers were still removing the boards that had covered the ornate doors and windows of the Rothschild synagogue during four years of Nazi occupation. The synagogue courtyard was mobbed; men, women, children and mothers pushing babies in carriages all trying to enter.

Those in uniform were allowed entry first, and then as many in the courtyard as could squeeze in, did.

When I finally entered the synagogue, cries of "Shalom Alecheim" echoed from every corner of the magnificent building. Tears of joy streamed down the cheeks. Not only was France free. but the Jewish population of Paris was liberated!

I had never been to the Wailing Wall, but I imagined that the emotions filling the sanctuary couldn't have been much different than if we were gathered in Jerusalem itself.

The crowds were fairly quiet during the service and the sermon. But when Rabbi Kaplan, the Chief Rabbi of France, opened the ark and began taking the Torahs out, bedlam broke loose. It was total pandemonium. Tears, shouting. The applause reverberated from the floorboards into the soles of my shoes. I have never seen anything like it before or since.

Rabbi Kaplan handed a Torah to me and to each of the soldiers from the Free French, Great Britain and the Free Polish and the Jewish soldiers representing the Allies.

It was time for the "Hakafah" to begin. "Hakafah" means to march around, but inching around better describes what we did that morning through thousands of people.

The women sitting in the upper balconies came down in waves shrieking and crying, -the joy of seeing a loved one you thought was lost, how you would touch and hold her to know all was OK. Everyone reached to kiss the Torah scrolls. For nearly five years this synagogue had been boarded up. That September morning on Rue de la Victoire was a highly emotional family reunion.

The Torah is not an artifact. We chant from it every week. We study from it. Kids prepare for their Bar Mitzvahs. The Torahs of the Rothschild Synagogue in Paris had lain mute in a state of suspended animation. Now we were celebrating with the greatest joy possible, -literally bringing the scrolls back to life.

There is something very electric about carrying a Torah. When you carry a Torah, the essence of the Jewish people, the entire history of the Jewish people is in your arms. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Moses on Mount Sinai, Sarah Rebecca, Rachel and Leah, are all there cradled against your shoulder.

I had no idea as I inched through the synagogue that I would soon meet a soldier who would change the direction of my life. I had no idea Marcel Berger was rescuing Jewish children and transporting them to Palestine or that I would join him, unasked, in his mission. Holding one of the Rothschild Synagogue Torahs, I had no inkling that I would soon journey to Palestine in '45 and again in '46, or that from '48 to '50 I would serve in the Israeli army. All I knew at that moment was that I was crying along with everyone else. Paris was liberated. The tide was turning.

During our final turn, a young girl, not more than fifteen years old approached. She tore from her coat the beige six-pointed star with 'Juif' 'Jew" painted on it in blue ink.

"C'est pour toi," she said. "This is for you." She pressed the star into my hand. I watched her melt back into the crowd, her rough cotton badge of honor grasped between my fingers. Before my eyes, in the form of one slender girl who had suffered unimaginablecruelty, was the value of liberty, the price paid for freedom.

I have carried many Torahs in my life. It's an honor I never refused, not even when I was in Singapore and was asked to carry a Torah whose ornate silver case alone weighed a knee-buckling one hundred pounds. When you are asked to carry a Torah you are given the honor of being part of the jubilation. You become a messenger of joy.

It's been fifty-five years since that morning celebration in Paris, when I experienced the tremendous power that our Torah has over her people.

Each Sabbath after the Torah is read we sing "Etz Chaim Hee" - It is a tree of life to those who hold fast to it and all who cling to it find happiness."

It is truly an amazing people who dance with a book and cling to it to find happiness.