Source: Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly: "Feature: Restoring the Torah"
Talmud Study
(Video)
This video from Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly follows Neal Yerman, a sofer, or scribe, in Cherry Hill, N.J., as he works on a Torah recovered from the Polish town of Ostrof, where 9,000 Jews were killed by Nazis over three days in 1941. The Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, is considered the holiest object in Jewish life.
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The Torah is the first of three categories of books that make up the Hebrew Bible: Torah (the Five Books of Moses), Nevi'im (Prophets) and Ketuvim (Writings). According to Jewish tradition, the Torah was dictated to Moses by God after the Exodus from Egypt, around 1220 B.C.E. It is Judaism's central document. As the "living word of God," it is the only document that Jewish tradition regards as containing God's words and only God's words.
The Torah scroll is handwritten on specially prepared parchment and rolled up around two thick wooden dowels, which are attached to either end of the scroll. The rolled-up Torah is covered with fabric and often ornamented with silver crowns on the handles and a silver breastplate on the front. It is kept in the synagogue in a cabinet known as an Ark.
Typically, Jews read portions of the Torah during morning services on Mondays, Thursdays, Saturdays (the Sabbath) and Jewish holidays, completing the reading of the entire Torah over the course of a year. Whenever the Torah is visible, the congregation must stand. It is always carried very carefully; if dropped, the entire congregation must either fast or give tzedakah, or charity. Jews customarily kiss the rolled-up Torah as it is carried past them during the service.
One must be careful not to touch the parchment scroll. Some say this is because the Torah is so holy; others say the oil from fingers can damage the parchment. When Jews read from the Torah they use a pointer called a yad (pronounced "yahd"), which means "hand" in Hebrew. The pointer usually is in the shape of a hand with a finger pointing.
Judaism has 613 commandments, all contained in the words of the Torah. The last commandment states that every Jew must write a Torah scroll during his lifetime. This commandment is not carried out literally; rather, it is observed through an agent, that is, by contributing money to hire a sofer or scribe. Often, congregants hold the end of the quill while the sofer writes, as the woman in the video does.
The work of a sofer is very detail-oriented, requiring a steady hand and a great deal of patience. To become a sofer, a Jewish person must master the art of Hebrew calligraphy, study document restoration and learn the many rules and traditions governing the writing and restoring of a Torah. In addition, a sofer must be an observant Jew.
ARTHUR MAGIDA: Neil Yerman hears voices, the voices of each of the 9,000 Jews the Nazis slaughtered in a three-day killing spree in 1941 in the Polish town of Ostrow. Yerman is a sofer, a scribe. He writes and restores Torah scrolls, more than 200 by now. And with each letter he writes in a scroll he is now restoring, the Torah which came from Ostrow, he says he hears the name of the souls from that town.
Mr. NEIL YERMAN (Sofer): In a case like this, I feel that there are many, many, many others present whose presence I might not normally feel as much. I feel in a way, there are 9,000 people with me every time I'm in the scrolls, and they're watching and whispering. They're with me. So it's an incredible feeling.
MAGIDA: This one-year Torah restoration project at Temple Emanuel in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, has moved congregants in unexpected ways. Just seeing the desecrated scrolls gives them a glimmer of the trauma that the Jews suffered under the Nazis and of the timelessness of Torah.
Ms. SHIRLEY CHESS: The minute I put my hand on the quill and on our scribe's hand as he wrote the letter, restored the letter, I just felt a spark that seemed to jump right from the Torah to my heart. And I feel even more connected than I ever felt before. It made me a part of all those lives that I can't help thinking about.
MAGIDA: Restoring the Torah restores it to life, and that life corresponds, in this case, says Rabbi Jerome David of Temple Emanuel, to the Jews who once lived in Ostrow.
Rabbi JEROME DAVID (Temple Emanuel): In restoring a letter, you restore a name. You give birth to a name; you give birth to a life. So in a sense, this community is starting to live again. And we speculate -- the children do -- about what were these lives like? There were grandparents, we know for sure.
Dr. ARNOLD BASKIES: My great-grandfather, whose name was Moishe Shules Okimaka, was a -- a leader in his community, and unfortunately perished at the hands of the Nazis on the steps of his synagogue -- more than likely, trying to either get in or get out of the synagogue on the day that they arrived.
Rabbi DAVID: Over three days of very brutal killing, that entire proud Jewish community vanished with just a couple survivors to tell the -- of the horrible events. And I think our people have been touched by that sense that they are literally connecting with a population, with a community that lived, you know, many, many years before and -- no longer exists.
MAGIDA: Dr. Arnold Baskies has located this Torah and another one in a musty cabinet in Ostrow, the town where his grandfather had been killed.
Dr. BASKIES: There were burn marks on them; in some instances, there were blood on them. They were moldy; they were mildewed and clearly in need of -- in desperate need of repair.
MAGIDA: Unique as it may be, this Torah is the same in many ways as every other Torah. Each contains the first five books of the Bible. Each has exactly 304,805 letters. Each is written by a scribe in black ink on parchment made of skin from a ritually pure animal. And each is roughly the length of a football field. It takes an experienced scribe about one year to write a scroll. Before writing the name of God, every scribe must immerse himself in a mikvah, a ritual bath, as well as daven, or pray.
Mr. YERMAN: (Hebrew spoken) We carry on very, very old traditions in the writing of Torah, encompassing rules and regulations and understandings which were set down in different parts of the Jewish world, parts of the Diaspora over many centuries.
MAGIDA: And every Torah, which is a replica, in effect, of what Moses received at Sinai, must be so exact that one misspelling invalidates an entire scroll.
Mr. YERMAN: A Torah can live more than 1,000 years. So when one makes a mistake in Torah, one has to be very careful to erase so as not to leave any trace that there has been any erasures.
MAGIDA: Torahs that cannot be repaired are buried in Jewish cemeteries, again an acknowledgment that these are the living word of God.
Here in this cemetery, holy texts that are beyond repair are disposed of in a reverential manner that connotes that here is a life, the life of God.
Rabbi DAVID: The one constant as we look at this Torah, as we see this scroll, the one thing that's going to be here long after we are, long after this building is here, long after this Jewish community is here, is that Torah. It's really -- Torah becomes, in a sense, our immortality.
MAGIDA: The Holocaust Torah now being restored is making Neil Yerman, the scribe who is working on it, more aware that he is giving new voice to holy words that were almost silenced.
Mr. YERMAN: Every Torah is a life, and every life is unique, but there are some lives which stand out before us or leave more of an impression. To be in the presence of a wounded but living survivor where there were no other survivors is awesome.
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