ICJudaism: A Teacher’s Guide to Judaism
Hosted by ICTeachers Formerly: Mike’s Rough Guide to Judaism
Disclaimer:
The contents of these pages represent the author’s personal views, experience and
understanding.
There are bound to be some things here that some Jews would disagree
with.
Sefer Torah
For Jews a Sefer Torah (Torah scroll) is the most precious of objects. Sefer (pronounced sayfer) means book.
Every scroll is handwritten by a highly trained scribe known as a sofer (maker of
books -
The whole scroll will have around 250 columns (modern scrolls usually have 248 columns
of 42 lines each). A whole scroll will usually be made of around 60 -
No base metal (such as iron, steel, copper, bronze), which may be used to make weapons, may be used during the preparation. The scroll is written with ink made from natural materials such as crushed oak gall and soot, using quills from a kosher bird (usually turkey or goose). The writing is done in a highly decorated style known as a STAM (Sefer Torah, Tefillin and Mezuzah). Every letter must be correct, so the text is never written from memory but is copied from a certified correct copy (called a tikkun). Before writing each word the sofer checks it, he sings the whole word, then sings each letter as he writes it and, finally, checks it again. He must be especially careful when writing God’s name, since a mistake in that may not be corrected and the whole yeriah would be unusable (mistakes in other words can be corrected by scratching them out with a sharp edge, such as a piece of broken glass). There are 79,847 words (that’s 304,805 letters) in a finished scroll. Not surprisingly, it can take a long time (between 1 and 2 years) to complete a whole scroll.
When it is completed the yariot (plural of Yariah) are sewn together. The ends of the scroll thus formed are sewn onto wooden rollers known as aytzei chayim (trees of life). These have wooden discs to protect the edges of the parchment, strong handles at the bottom ends and elongated finials at the top ends.
A finished Sefer Torah weigh 10 -
A delightful book on the subject of making a Sefer Torah, is:
Sofer, the story of a Torah Scroll by Eric Ray
The book has many photographs and clearly explained, accessible text. At the time of writing (2022) new copies seem to be unavailable and second hand copies are rather expensive. You may find it in a library or specialist bookshop...
