by George Gazarek
I’d like to focus on two verses in this week’s portion [September 12-19]. The first is Chapter 31, Verse 19, in the Book of Deuteronomy, where God tells Moses to write down a poem. To me, it’s clear that God is talking to Moses, and it is a poem that he’s told to write down, a poem of 42 verses, which follows immediately in Chap-ter 32. And remember God said this isn’t too baffling for me. But somehow the Sages understood this as re-ferring to the Torah as a whole, and from this verse de-rived the 613th commandment: that it is the religious du-ty for every Jew to write a Torah scroll for themselves.
To write a Torah scroll, you must be at least 13 years old, some say you must be married. You must be fluent and tested in over 4,000 laws regarding the writing of a Torah, you must be certified, and you must have the proper intention when writing, especially when writing God’s name. Let’s say you meet all these requirements and are ready to begin. First you’re going to prepare the parchment sheets. Kosher parchment called klaf must come from a kosher animal, usually a goat, bull, cow, or deer. You’ll first soak the skin in lime water for nine days to remove hairs, and then stretch it over a wooden frame to dry. You’ll scrape the skin to remove more hair and sand it to smooth the surface. When it’s dry, you need to cut it into a rectangle. A Torah usually contains 248 columns, and only three of four columns fit on a rec-tangle. So a Torah may require about 80 of more skins in all.
Now that the parchment sheets are ready, you need to use a straight edge to draw a writing pattern on each sheet; 42 horizontal lines across and two vertical lines defining the boundaries for each column. Leave a mar-gin of three inches on the top, four at the bottom, and two inches between columns. Now you can make some quills for writing. The feathers must come from a ko-sher bird, usually a goose or turkey. Patiently carve a point in the end of the feather. You’ll use many quills in writing one Torah. Save a special quill for writing God’s four-letter name. You’ll need to make some ink by combining a blend of powdered gall nuts, copper sul-fate crystals, gum Arabic, and water. Since only fresh ink that is a deep black is acceptable, you’ll need to pre-pare only a small amount at a time so that the ink will always be fresh.
After working with the animal skins and mixing ink, you’ll need to visit the mikvah before you start writing. You can’t write from memory but must look into the text of a Chumash that has been thoroughly checked for ac-curacy. Although Hebrew is read and written from right to left, you will form each letter starting from left to right, singing each word, each letter, out loud; all 304,805 letters. The scroll may contain no errors what-soever. Some mistakes can be corrected by scraping off the ink with a knife or stone. If a mistake is made in writing any of the names of God, no correction may be made and the parchment must be buried. Assuming you’ve finished all 80 parchment sheets, you can now sew them together. You’ll use a thread made from the leg sinews of a kosher animal, usually a cow, sheep, or ox. Make one stitch every six lines of text, sewing the backs of the sheets, so the stitches are not visible from the front. Finally you will sew the scroll onto the wood-en rollers. By now you’ve probably noticed that the most common letter you’ve written is the Yud because you’ve written it 31,530 times, while you’ve only writ-ten the Tet 1,802 times.
Now if all of this scares you, there’s an out. You can also satisfy this commandment by buying your own Torah or by contributing a portion toward a Torah. I checked it out on Google and you can get a new Torah for between $15,000 and $50,000. You can buy a re-paired Torah, which might be better because of its his-torical legacy, for about $5,000 to $15,000. Someone is actually auctioning on Yahoo Torah pages from a 150- year-old Spanish Torah for $500 to $800 a page.
In closing, let’s go back to the ending of Chapter 30 where God says this beautiful line, “I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day: I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life, so that you will live.” God wasn’t talking about physical life but rather spiritual life. The essence of life is choos-ing. It is what makes us most human. It defines who we are. It is the source of our greatest pride and our greatest pleasure. But making meaningful choices is not easy.
If you’re able to pass on a second piece of cake, you choose life. Gobbling it down is choosing death. If you make that unexpected call to thank someone, this is choosing life. Talking yourself out of it is choosing death. Giving your time and money to those who need it is choosing life. Turning away from those in need is choosing death. We all are faced with numerous choices every day. I challenge each of you as you face those choices, to choose life. For in choosing life, you are in fact writing your own Torah.
Shabbat Shalom