Sendak, schmendak. - guest review of CJM exhibit
304,805 at the CJM
by Howard Selznick
Sendak, schmendak.
The much-ballyhooed exhibit on the acclaimed author and illustrator Maurice Sendak packs them into the San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum. What’s overlooked is the display upstairs.
The CJM has commissioned a scribe, Julie Seltzer, to write a Torah scroll, all 304,805 letters of it. She’s a rookie soferet; it’s her first effort. You’d hardly know it by the care and precision with which she forms the letters and words. She was taught well.
Julie claims that the writing is a science. It’s anything but. The effort is mostly artistic and requires much patience. The discipline to work for several hours a day for over one year with ink, quill pen, and parchment must be demanding. It’s a labor of love. It could be mind-numbing boring, but Julie deals with this by remembering that her efforts connect to numerous scribes going back thousands of years. It must be gratifying to know that she is sustaining an ancient tradition.
The effort is mostly copying; the real artistic work comes from the need to justify the text. So that every line has equal length, certain letters must be elongated to fill the space. Evidently, you can tell a veteran scribe from an inexperienced one by the way this spacing is done.
It’s also an ongoing ritual. Each word is pronounced before being written. Before beginning work each day, she silently recites, “I write this Torah scroll for the sake of the holiness of the Torah.” Before each of the many names of God is written, she whispers, “I write this holy name for the sake of the holiness of the Torah.”
She expects the scroll to be completed by the fall of 2010, about one year after starting. If so, she will have written an average of about 1,000 letters per day (excluding Shabbat and holidays) or the equivalent of 20 verses.
A scribe’s work is anonymous, so Julie will not sign the completed scroll. Too bad.
Post script: the 613th mitzvah is to write your own Torah, derived from Deuteronomy 31:19. Of course, it must be done perfectly, according to guidelines on type of parchment, ruled lines, type and color of ink, quill, and lettering; even one variation means the scroll cannot be read publicly. What if I wrote a Torah on notebook paper, with a pencil, in my poor Hebrew script? No matter how kosher the trees or lead were, the result wouldn’t be a truly valid Torah, at least in public, ritualistic terms.
But what a labor of love this would be! It would be my private Torah, to be used to follow during Shacharit services. Or study the words during Shabbat Torah class. Or learn Biblical Hebrew. What a sense of accomplishment it would produce! What a huge time commitment it would be! Vey iz mir!
So, when should I start?
by Howard Selznick
Sendak, schmendak.
The much-ballyhooed exhibit on the acclaimed author and illustrator Maurice Sendak packs them into the San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum. What’s overlooked is the display upstairs.
The CJM has commissioned a scribe, Julie Seltzer, to write a Torah scroll, all 304,805 letters of it. She’s a rookie soferet; it’s her first effort. You’d hardly know it by the care and precision with which she forms the letters and words. She was taught well.
Julie claims that the writing is a science. It’s anything but. The effort is mostly artistic and requires much patience. The discipline to work for several hours a day for over one year with ink, quill pen, and parchment must be demanding. It’s a labor of love. It could be mind-numbing boring, but Julie deals with this by remembering that her efforts connect to numerous scribes going back thousands of years. It must be gratifying to know that she is sustaining an ancient tradition.
The effort is mostly copying; the real artistic work comes from the need to justify the text. So that every line has equal length, certain letters must be elongated to fill the space. Evidently, you can tell a veteran scribe from an inexperienced one by the way this spacing is done.
It’s also an ongoing ritual. Each word is pronounced before being written. Before beginning work each day, she silently recites, “I write this Torah scroll for the sake of the holiness of the Torah.” Before each of the many names of God is written, she whispers, “I write this holy name for the sake of the holiness of the Torah.”
She expects the scroll to be completed by the fall of 2010, about one year after starting. If so, she will have written an average of about 1,000 letters per day (excluding Shabbat and holidays) or the equivalent of 20 verses.
A scribe’s work is anonymous, so Julie will not sign the completed scroll. Too bad.
Post script: the 613th mitzvah is to write your own Torah, derived from Deuteronomy 31:19. Of course, it must be done perfectly, according to guidelines on type of parchment, ruled lines, type and color of ink, quill, and lettering; even one variation means the scroll cannot be read publicly. What if I wrote a Torah on notebook paper, with a pencil, in my poor Hebrew script? No matter how kosher the trees or lead were, the result wouldn’t be a truly valid Torah, at least in public, ritualistic terms.
But what a labor of love this would be! It would be my private Torah, to be used to follow during Shacharit services. Or study the words during Shabbat Torah class. Or learn Biblical Hebrew. What a sense of accomplishment it would produce! What a huge time commitment it would be! Vey iz mir!
So, when should I start?
posted by Chavarah @ 6:15 PM
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