On a spring day in 1964, the leaders of Congregation B’nai Amoona approached Isadore Katz with some trepidation.

Katz, 83, was the synagogue’s shammash, or sexton, in charge of maintaining its religious objects. He had been B’nai Amoona’s shammash for more than half a century, and the rabbis had come to ask which of the congregation’s Torah scrolls could be donated to a federal prison in Springfield, Mo.

A chaplain at the facility had requested a Torah scroll – the only holy object in Judaism – so that Jewish prisoners could read from it during Sabbath services.

The rabbis did not yet know it, but the genesis of that request was a Jewish prisoner whom they would never meet, whose surname they would never learn, whose crimes would always remain a mystery – and whom they would compare to Moses.

Forty-five years after the congregation agreed to donate a Torah scroll to the Springfield prison, officials there decided there were no longer enough Jewish inmates to use it, and they have returned it to B’nai Amoona.

On Saturday, the congregation will welcome the Torah scroll back to the synagogue in an emotional ceremony that will resemble a homecoming for a war hero.

Katz “ruled the daily chapel in our congregation with an iron hand, ” B’nai Amoona’s rabbi emeritus, Rabbi Bernard Lipnick, remembered this week. “He was a man of deep, deep faith. He was on a first-name basis with God.” Lipnick said the elderly shammash “took particular pride in Torah scrolls under his jurisdiction.”

Katz chose one, and gave the rabbis his blessing to loan it to the U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield.

But nearly half a century later, the scroll seems to have accomplished its mission at the prison. “I can’t remember a time when I’ve seen the scroll open, ” said Chaplain Michael Reighard, who has worked at the prison for 15 years. “We wanted to get the scroll back in hands that will appreciate and use it.”

That was precisely the reason the board of B’nai Amoona – then located in St. Louis and since moved to Creve Coeur – donated the scroll to the prison in 1964.

Every synagogue has at least one sefer Torah, a scroll that includes the five books of Moses – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy – that are read aloud during worship.

The Torah is “the lifeblood of a congregation, ” said B’nai Amoona’s current senior rabbi, Rabbi Carnie Rose. “Its sanctity comes from its interconnectedness with the holiest object in Judaism, the human being.”

Sefer Torahs are expensive to create. A sofer, or scribe, writes every scroll by hand, which can take up to a year. The scroll’s parchment must be made from the skin of a kosher animal, and the ink cannot contain metal or any other substance that could be an instrument of war.

Because of the expense, it’s not unusual for larger, established synagogues with multiple sefer Torahs to lend one to a smaller congregation. That’s the request that came to the St. Louis Rabbinical Association in April 1964.

The request began with a Jewish prisoner known as Gerald, who had recently rediscovered his faith. Gerald had been participating in the small Jewish services offered in the prison, but was troubled that the worship services lacked a Torah scroll. He asked if the chaplains could acquire one and was told that if he proved he was serious, prison officials would help.

Gerald spent the following weeks in the prison’s wood shop building an Ark, a special cabinet constructed to hold Torah scrolls.

The chief of chaplains held up his end of the bargain and sent word to Jewish organizations across the region that the prison was searching for a scroll. Lipnick took the request from the Rabbinical Association meeting back to his board, which voted unanimously to donate one of their scrolls.

On May 7 that year, after meeting with Katz, seven men from the synagogue drove the scroll to Springfield for the donation ceremony at the prison.

“The car in which the Torah was being transported was classified as a synagogue, of course, ” Lipnick reported in his sermon two weeks later. “Skull caps were worn throughout.”

Over lunch, Lipnick asked the prison’s chaplains about the request for a scroll. A Protestant minister, Chaplain Jackson Reed, told the group about Gerald and explained that he was the product of a Protestant father and a Jewish mother.

“Gerald never knew who he was or to what group he belonged, ” Lipnick said in his sermon.

Reed said he believed that confusion was “the source of Gerald’s problem” and “as a result, he became an assaultive person and entered one reform school after another, ” according to Lipnick’s sermon. “Finally, he committed a major crime and was sent to a federal prison.”

When he had first heard that B’nai Amoona agreed to donate a sefer Torah, Reed met with Gerald and told him that his own story resembled the story of Moses: Moses had a speech defect, as did Gerald. Moses had trouble deciding between his mother – Pharaoh’s daughter, an Egyptian – and his own people, just as Gerald was confused between his Protestant and Jewish heritages. Gerald had committed a major crime. Moses killed his Egyptian taskmaster.

After the murder, Moses fled to the desert for years, seeking an explanation for his actions. For Gerald, that desert was federal prison. In the desert, Moses identified with his people, just as Gerald had done among fellow Jewish prisoners in Springfield. Finally, Moses led his people out of Egypt and gave them the Torah. Through Gerald’s actions, a Torah scroll had been secured for the prison’s Jewish inmates.

“The close of the story almost broke our hearts, ” Lipnick said in his sermon. “Moses led his people to the very gates of the Promised Land but was not permitted to enter it. He had to ascend the mountain and witness the fruition of his dreams and his labors only from afar … Gerald had led this little congregation in Springfield to the fulfillment of its goal, the acquisition of the Torah.”

But Gerald never got to see the scroll or read from it. He was transferred to another prison 10 days before the B’nai Amoona group arrived with the scroll.

For the seven men who had delivered the scroll to the prison, the trip back to St. Louis “was a very sober and thoughtful one, ” Lipnick wrote. “Each of us, with all due modesty, had represented a lot of people that day: all the members of B’nai Amoona; Moses, who delivered the Torah for the first time; and Gerald, whose insistence caused it to be delivered a second time, at least in Springfield.”

In his new book, “America’s Prophet: Moses and the American Story, ” Bruce Feiler writes that the Moses story has recurred often in American history.

“The mood was sober in that car on the way home because those men were wondering whether the message of the Torah would work, ” Feiler said in an interview, after hearing the story of B’nai Amoona’s scroll. “The Torah offers a narrative of hope, but there can also be a sense of anxiety about whether its message will prevail. The message of Moses dying is that the dream does not die with the dreamer.”

And, indeed, Gerald’s dream of securing a Torah scroll was realized only after he had been transferred. Recognizing that, Lipnick tried for years to locate him. The Springfield facility did not keep transfer records, and a spokesperson for the Federal Bureau of Prisons in Washington said this week that without a last name, finding Gerald would be impossible.

On Saturday, the prison’s sefer Torah will return to its place in B’nai Amoona’s Ark. During the ceremony, Lipnick, now 83 – the same age Katz was the day the Torah left the synagogue 45 years ago – will deliver the same sermon he gave two weeks after driving the scroll to the Springfield prison.

“It’s like a member of the family has gone off to the mission field and is now returning home, ” Rose said.

“My prayer is that this particular scroll will go back out into the mission field, ” Rose continued. “This scroll was born for a high purpose, an extraordinary purpose.”