Woodcliff Lake temple's families share in the writing of the Torah
Miles Shore watched carefully as the sofer, or scribe, dipped the feather turkey quill into black ink. Then he grasped onto it with the help of the sofer, Gedaliah Druin, who advised him, “Don’t let go.” The two of them worked carefully to fill in the white space with the Hebrew letter “yud” with the ebony fluid. Finally, the deed was done: Miles Shore of Stone Ridge, age 8, had completed a letter in the Torah. “Yud is your letter forever,” said Shore’s father, Michael Shore, who held his grinning son in his lap.
Druin explained that each letter in the Torah is important and if one piece of one letter is missing, the Torah is considered incomplete. “It shows us, every little thing you do can make a big change in the world.”
Temple Emanuel of the Pascack Valley commissioned the new Torah to be written last year, marking the first time in nearly 50 years that a new Torah will be brought into the 85-year-old Conservative synagogue.
The completion will be marked with a large celebration, called a siyum, on June 1st when the scroll will be placed in the temple’s decorative ark in the main sanctuary.
Writing a Torah must be done by hand and generally takes a year for a specially trained sofer who must write in Hebrew calligraphy using a feather quill and ink on parchment. If there is one mistake, the entire Torah – consisting of 304,805 words — is considered unkosher. A new Torah costs anywhere from $35,000 to $55,000.
Writing a Torah, or even just one letter in the Torah is considered a great mitzvah, the final of the 613 commandments, said Rabbi Benjamin Shull, the temple’s spiritual leader. “But given that that’s a rather daunting undertaking for an individual, you can have someone be your proxy, which would be the scribe. In a general sense, the Torah scroll for the Jews is the most holy object we have and to know that you literally can have a hand in creating this holy object is a very powerful thing. I have never seen something so touch people … you are not only a part of this community but are part of this legacy that goes back generations.”
Temple President Dan Kramer, who wrote a letter together with his children, parents and sisters, called the experience awe-inspiring. “It’s a legacy for the entire Jewish community that will have influence for generations to come,” he said.
What Simone Wilker, an event coordinator, loves most about the initiative is how it brings families together. “It’s an important family moment and people are very touched by it,” she said, noting that some people have flown in from other parts of the country for the event. “Judaism is a very communal religion. It’s not just one person. You know that you belong to a community. You are there for each other.”
Woodcliff Lake temple's families share in the writing of the TorahSource: www.northjersey.com