It’s hard to daven properly because I have to learn again,” said Avi Golden, who is recovering from a stroke that left him with aphasia — difficulty in communicating — as well as difficulties in using his right arm. Golden, who is an Orthodox Jew, has made great strides in his recovery over the last three years, with the help of the Adler Aphasia Center in Maywood, but he has a hard time with prayer, as the stroke left him unable to read Hebrew. On Shabbat he goes to synagogue, but he has not yet felt ready to be called up to the Torah for an aliyah. “I look and I pray,” he said. “It’s frustrating, but it’s good also.” In September he is planning to start taking classes at Lehman College in the Bronx, where he will be working with the speech clinic “to learn Hebrew again.”

A bill has been introduced into the New Jersey legislature (S1931 and A2811) to establish a New Jersey Aphasia Study Commission in the Department of Health and Senior Services. Sponsors of the bill include state Sens. Loretta Weinberg and Diane Allen and Assembly members Valerie Huttle, Gordon Johnson, Connie Wagner and Joan Voss. The Senate version of the bill (S1931) states that the purpose of the commission is to: “establish a mechanism in order to ascertain the prevalence of aphasia in New Jersey, and the unmet needs of persons with aphasia and those of their families,” to “study model aphasia support programs,” and to “provide recommendations for additional support programs and resources…”

According to the Hadassah College Website, the Adler Aphasia Center at Hadassah College in Jerusalem is the “first international branch of the Adler Aphasia Center in New Jersey.”

“My friend Miriam Josephs, who was very active in Hadassah, raised $100,000 for scholarships for Hadassah College, where they teach speech pathology,” said Elaine Adler. “That led to starting the center there.”

Mary Slade, a panelist at an Adler Aphasia Center information session who is recovering from aphasia, observed, “It takes a family time to accept that a person had a stroke and has aphasia. When you first get sick there is often anger, confusion, and frustration.”

Elaine Adler became a caregiver when her husband Mike had a stroke. “When the breadwinner becomes aphasic, what happens to the family?” Adler asked. “The spouse has to take care of the aphasic and the family…. I realized how important it is to help the caregiver.”

Throngs of Jews walk past St. Mark’s Syrian Orthodox Cathedral in Teaneck every Shabbat on their way to shul, unaware that the church is the caretaker of an ancient and precious piece of Jewish history.

When Archbishop Mar Athanasius Yeshue Samuel arrived in New Jersey in 1949, he brought with him four scrolls and fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which include the earliest known texts of books of the Bible. Although the scrolls were later sold to an Israeli archeologist, Samuel kept the fragments and they are to this day under the care of the Eastern Diocese of the Syrian Orthodox Church, headquartered in Teaneck.

Digitizing the Dead Sea Scroll fragments in Teaneck led to an important discovery, said Bruce Zuckerman, professor of religion in the College of Letters, Arts & Sciences at the University of Southern California and founder/director of the West Semitic Research Project.

While the shooting itself took only several days, later analysis, conducted back at USC, revealed a possible new tool for refining the dating of the scrolls.

“We were very pleased; it was a complete surprise,” he said.

“The problem with doing ancient history is that you don’t have very many sources,” said Steven Fine, professor of Jewish history at Yeshiva University and part of the group convened by Bruce Zuckerman to study the Dead Sea Scroll fragments at St. Mark’s Cathedral in Teaneck. “You have to squeeze out as much as you can from everything that does exist.”

Fine, who also heads YU’s Center for Israel Studies, is clearly excited by the project and the doors that Zuckerman’s work have opened for students in the field.

He said that Zuckerman, a friend for some 30 years, first approached him when he was a graduate student in Jerusalem.

“I got a call saying, ‘Stop everything. Next week we’re photographing the Dead Sea Scrolls at the Shrine of the Book.”

The story of the Dead Sea Scrolls discovery and fate — and how fragments ended up in Teaneck — “is enormously interesting,” said Hershel Shanks, the founder of the Biblical Archaeology Society and the editor of Biblical Archaeology Review.

The author of several books on the scrolls, he was instrumental in widening scholars’ access to them. (And that is a story in itself.)

The story “goes back to 1947,” he said in a telephone interview from Rehovoth Beach, Del., “when the first scrolls were found by the Bedouin” in a cave in Qumran, near the Dead Sea. More than 900 were eventually discovered in the Judean desert, in 15,000 fragments.