Loading…
Loading…
Sefer Torah
A Torah scroll is written by hand, one letter at a time, over about a year. There are 304,805 letters in it, and if a single one is missing the whole scroll cannot be used.
Not a printed book. A Sefer Torah is the five books of Moses written out by hand by a sofer — a scribe trained for it — with a quill, in ink he prepares himself, on parchment, in letters whose shapes are fixed down to the crowns on them.
It takes about a year. And every letter carries the whole thing: if one of the 304,805 is missing, cracked or malformed, the scroll is not kosher and cannot be read from until a scribe repairs it. That is why a Torah is checked, and why the idea of a single letter mattering is not a sentiment somebody invented for a fundraising page — it is the law of how the scroll works.
The final commandment of the Torah — the 613th — is that every Jew have a Torah scroll written. Not bought, not inherited: written.
Almost nobody can commission a whole one. So the way it is done is that a letter is written for you, by name, in a scroll the community is writing together — a letter, a word, a verse or a portion. That is what a campaign like this is: one scroll, and a few hundred people who each have something in it.
The Rebbe encouraged exactly this, and for a reason beyond the practical one. A scroll where every letter is indispensable and no letter is worth more than another is a fair description of a Jewish community, and having a letter in one is a way of saying so.
Two kinds of thing: the writing itself, and the silver and velvet the finished scroll is dressed in. Every one of these is a real part of a Sefer Torah.
Each one is arranged with the Rabbi, for what it is and for what suits your family, and can be paid over time.
When a scroll is finished it is not quietly delivered. The last letters are left blank on purpose, and on the day, people are given the honor of holding the quill with the scribe while each one is filled in.
Then the scroll is dressed — the binder, the mantle, the breastplate, the crown — and carried out into the street under a chuppah, the same canopy used at a wedding, with music and torches and dancing the whole way to the Shul. At the door the Ark is opened and every scroll already inside is brought out to meet the new one, and they are danced in together.
It is one of the happiest things a community does, and it is open to everybody, whether or not you have a letter in the scroll.
Tell us what you have in mind — a letter, a portion, the crown, or simply that you would like to be part of it — and Rabbi Weinfeld will come back to you himself.
Chabad of Silicon Valley is a registered 501(c)(3), EIN 84-3752618. A dedication is tax-deductible to the extent the law allows, and can be given by card, check, stock or transfer — the details for each are here.