November 1, 2007

Torah, torah, torah
Etz Hayim Synagogue gets visit from traveling scribe
By Brian Early bearly@hippopress.com

Last month, a traveling Sofer went to the Etz Hayim Synagogue in Derry to inspect their Torah. A Sofer is a trained Jewish scribe who can transcribe Torah scrolls. The Sofer was able to look at the Torah’s writing to determine where it originated from and estimate its age. Louis Rieser, rabbi at the Etz Hayim Synagogue since 1997, spoke about the experience and what he learned.

Louis Rieser is the rabbi at the Etz Hayim Synagogue in Derry. Last week, the synagogue’s Torahs were examined by a scribe who checked on the quality of the scrolls.

Q:What is a Torah?
The Torah is a scroll that includes the first five books of the Bible: Genesis through Deuteronomy. The scroll is handwritten on parchment, which is usually made with sheepskin. Because it’s hand-inked onto the parchment, and it’s a scroll, so it turns as you use it through the years, the scroll does need to be checked every several years to see that it’s in good condition, to see that the stitching between the sheets of the parchment remains in good shape, to see if the lettering remains in good condition and so forth. We had the opportunity for a Sofer, who’s a scribe trained to write and check Torahs, to come in and examine the three Torahs that we own.

What’s involved in checking a Torah? How technical are these people?
It’s pretty technical. It’s not the kind of calligraphy that you get off the computer or the calligraphy you use for party announcements. It’s a demanding task. Each Torah looks the same, though there are two to three different styles of Torah, but they are really exact copies from one to another over hundreds of years. What he’s looking at is to see if the letters are shaped right. Where there’s a solid line that it hasn’t become a broken line. To really see the whole condition of what this is. Everything about a Torah is natural. The parchment is lambskin, the stitching that is done to connect the parchment sheets together, the thread for that is made from ligaments, the ink is made all of natural products. Each scribe brews their own ink and it’s written with a quill feather.

How long does it take to scribe a Torah?
It takes about a year if you start from scratch. He did some repairs, but the main thing we had him do was to get an evaluation of all of our Torahs so we know what needs to be done and get them up to the best condition as quickly as we could.

How old [are] your Torahs?
They range from about 50 years to just over 100 years. Our synagogue is 15 years old. We bought one and two were given to us from other congregations that were closing their doors or merging with other organizations.

What was the scribe able to tell you about your Torahs?
Part of it was age, and part [was] where it came from. One came from Israel, one from the Polish-Russian border, and one comes from southern Poland. He looked at the writing and the style of writing. The writing both told him sort of where it came from and something about age. That was the clues he had to work with. He could tell us the quality of the Torahs. One of them is not as a good of quality as the others, just in terms of the writing and the skill of it all, and he could tell the condition, what kind of repairs [are] needed going forward.

Major repairs?
For one of them, there is. The other two aren’t that bad. One Torah has a significant number of pieces that need to be repaired in terms of re-inking parts of the text.

What did you find exciting about the process?
This not something that happens very often. Maybe five or six years ago we [sent] one of our Torahs down to a scribe to have them look at it and do some work on it. We have never had a scribe on premise. People don’t see this very often. It’s sort of a hidden art. Ordinary folks at a synagogue might see this once in a decade. We read the Torah at services every week, but people don’t know how the Torahs are made. We also had a chance to have the scribe to talk to our teenagers, most of whom are preparing for the bar and bat mitzvah, a coming of age for the Jewish community. He told them that the Torah is unlike anything you’ve ever encountered. With a book, you page through it, you read it and then you’re done with it. The Torah scroll is only used for holy purposes. It’s only used for services. You can’t read it casually. It’s not even used for studying. The handwritten scroll is only used for holy occasions. And it’s not read, but chanted. When you read something, you’re going to read the same way every time. But when you chant, that music happens only once. When you chant it next time, it will come out a little bit different. And he was really able to describe that to the kids. And there’s almost nothing else that matches that. But to describe that immediate presence of holiness is really unique. It’s a unique moment in the life of a community to experience this. In one sense, it’s a kind of a renewal of the congregation.

—Brian Early