Genesis, One Letter at a Time
Sofer guides members in writing the Torah
By Carissa Katz
(Aug. 27, 2009) “And now write this song for yourselves, and teach it to the children of Israel.” It is this commandment, the 613th of the Torah, which the congregation of the Jewish Center of the Hamptons in East Hampton is taking to heart this year as it celebrates its 50th anniversary.
 Carissa Katz Photos
|
The synagogue commissioned a scribe, or sofer, in Israel to undertake the nearly yearlong process of writing a new Torah scroll by hand, and that scroll is expected to arrive in New York within the week. In East Hampton members of the Jewish Center are writing a part of the “song” for themselves with the help of another sofer, Neil Yerman, who is in residency at the center this week.
On Memorial Day weekend, the congregation began to write the first words of B’reisheit, or Genesis, on a sheet of parchment sent to them by the sofer in Israel. Mr. Yerman has held writing sessions throughout the summer, guiding people’s hands as they add to the B’reisheit one Hebrew letter at a time. When the congregation completes its portion of the Torah, the corresponding portion will be removed from the scroll from Israel, and the congregation’s version will be sewn in. A “wedding” ceremony, signifying the marriage of the new Torah and the congregation, will be held on Sept. 26.
“About 200 people have written a letter of the Torah so far,” Mr. Yerman said during a writing session on Friday afternoon.
The writing is copied directly from another “scroll.”
The writing is copied from another scroll. |
Even a photocopied version of the writing will do, so long as none of the writing is done from memory. If a single one of 304,805 letters is out of place, the Torah cannot be used.
“Traditionally scrolls are very carefully proofread by scribes and rabbis and advanced students,” Mr. Yerman said. It takes three to four weeks of reading. “It will be half the length of a football field when it’s unrolled. Mistakes are made. You can erase letters or words, but sacred names cannot be erased. Therefore it becomes necessary to rewrite the whole panel of parchment.”
“There are hundreds of rules governing the structure of Torah,” Mr. Yerman said. Among them, it must be made of only kosher materials, from what it is written on to the writing implements and ink and anything else used to create it. The Jewish Center’s new Torah is being written on parchment made from the skin of a kosher animal, using turkey quills and black gall ink. If a letter or word needs to be erased, Mr. Yerman uses a smoothed pumice stone.
“This is an ancient art,” Mr. Yerman said, “and it has changed very little over a millennia.” He has helped restore close to 850 Torahs since 1987 and has written six scrolls from beginning to end.
Before the writing session began, Audrey Morgan, a congregant, approached Mr. Yerman. “Neil, I want to write a letter but my hands shake,” she said.
He told her not to worry. “They won’t shake. Your letter will be perfect. I have a technique.”
Her hands steadied by the sofer, Audrey Morgan wrote a letter on the parchment. |
“You know, I never thought about it when I was writing,” she said later.
At the start of the writing session on Friday, Mr. Yerman explained the importance of the process to the small group of people gathered in the center’s main sanctuary. “Any letter you write anywhere in the Torah is what makes it a Torah. Without it, it could not be used in any congregation anywhere in the world. That one letter that you write completes the Torah.”
“We’re now in the second day of Creation,” Mr. Yerman said Friday, reading first in Hebrew and then translating the passage that tells of God making “the firmament” and separating the waters below it from the waters above it. “There is no time after today that you can look at the water and the sky without the memory of that scene.”
His passion for the task at hand seemed to move even the teenagers listening. “Sometimes I do have to apologize. I’m excited about Torah,” he said. “When you spend all day long with letters, six days a week, sunrise to sunset, after a while, they speak to you. You just get totally, totally, totally involved.”
“When you come to write your letter, you’re never alone. I’m going to hold the quill for you, but we also take our memories with us, and the things we look forward to, and the people who have been a part of our lives and are not here . . . all of the people in our heart, they’re also in the Torah. That’s why the writing looks alive.”
Writing a letter with Mr. Yerman, “I felt so much a part of time,” Ms. Morgan said, “part of the past, part of the present, and part of the future.”
“In my whole life — and I’m a synagoguegoer — I have never felt so close to the Torah as I do going through this process,” said Carol Wenig, the chairwoman of the Torah project. “Our children, everyone who has come in to write and brought their children or grandchildren, this experience will probably stay with them for a lifetime,” she said. “I keep thinking that when the Torah is complete and when they parade it around the congregation, to know that one of the letters in it you wrote reminds you how each person counts.”
“It’s an amazing thing to see a Torah being born,” Mr. Yerman said. “It’s like a person.” But its lifespan is much longer. “If a Torah is well taken care of it will actually last 1,000 years.”
“Every temple has their Torahs, brought through wars and through history,” Ms. Morgan said.
In addition to helping the congregation write a new Torah, Mr. Yerman is also helping the synagogue restore the Torahs it already has. One of these is about 95 years old. He dated another to about 140 years ago, and estimated that a third one is close to 300 years old. “The last is a small scroll and very light. It was probably written at that size at a time when that part of Russia was under attack. It could be hidden easily. It would not slow down people trying to escape.”
“They all have a story, a wonderful story,” he said.
Watching Mr. Yerman restore the older scrolls, “you can almost feel the presence or spirit of another generation who worked on it,” Ms. Wenig said.
People can watch the restoration process at the Jewish Center today from 2 to 3 p.m. Mr. Yerman is leading a free workshop that is open to the public tonight at 7.
The Torah project is also a fund-raiser for the Jewish Center. To write a letter, people contribute anywhere from $18, which is a lucky number in Jewish cosmology, for a child under 12, to $180 for an adult. Congregants may also sponsor full words, verses, chapters, or one of five books, at $36,000 each.
Writing sessions were to continue through Labor Day, with some tomorrow, and the final ones on Sept. 6, but the project has proven so popular that the writing may be extended.