Writing in the Torah is considered the 613th mitzvah and final commandment (Deuteronomy 31:19). To commemorate its 25th anniversary, and to give its members the opportunity to fulfill this commandment, Congregation Beth Torah will write its own Torah. The project, “Renewing Our Promise Write Here, Right now — Together!” was launched on the first night of Sukkot. Members of the congregation will gather on Sunday morning, Oct. 6, as the scribe, Rabbi Moshe Druin, dips his quill into the ink and writes the first letter of Beresheet, “In the Beginning.” The Torah will be completed on Sunday, June 8, 2014.
“As each letter is essential to a Torah, anyone who helps write a letter, or contributes to its writing, is considered to have written a Torah,” said Beth Torah President Michelle Cole.
The Torah writing project is being organized by Samantha Hammontree with assistance from committee chairs Teresa Hellman (ceremonies), Frank and Robin Sterneck (fundraising), Miki Herman and Eileen Kershenbaum (education), Sandi Cantor (marketing) and Linda Zappulla and Julie Chesis (Torah writing experience). Hammontree said Beth Torah hired Sofer on Site to actually write the Torah. Rabbi Moshe Gruin, or one of his colleagues, will come to Beth Torah and conduct eight Torah-writing sessions. Because there are 304,805 letters in the Torah, not all of it will be written on site at the Reform congregation.
Rabbi Druin said scribes have been writing Torahs for more than 2,000 years and in many cases, congregations have commissioned Torahs and simply given the honor of writing a few letters to wealthy or important congregants. However, that’s not how Beth Torah is doing it.
“What we’re doing is going back to the tradition that was done over 2,000 years ago. When scribes would write a Torah they would go with the skins of an animal to a town and they would write the Torah with every family. Every person would have a chance to participate in the physical writing of a letter,” the scribe said.
While Rabbi Gruin helps a person write his letter by giving the person the chance to help hold the quill, at the same time he will give families the opportunity to learn and understand what they are writing.
“These letters have woven into them incredible messages of wonder and have inspired us for the past 2,000 years. The idea is to get every family connected not only through the physical writing but ultimately connect spiritually with the letters that they are writing and the meaning of it. At the end it will be a scroll that everyone will be emotionally attached to,” said Rabbi Druin, who has been a scribe for 32 years. He expects to spend about 10 minutes with each family.
“He has this phenomenal ability to connect you to Torah,” said Hammontree, who added that Beth Torah will offer a variety of educational opportunities in connection with this project.
While most people only have one opportunity in their lifetimes to fulfill this 613th commandment, Rabbi Mark Levin actually participated in a Torah writing project at The Temple, Congregation B’nai Jehudah in the 1980s. He’s very excited about this project because it’s causing people to consider the Torah in ways they haven’t before.
“People are doing a lot of examining of Torah in a way that says what’s important about this to my life, and that’s been very heartening and very exciting,” Rabbi Levin said.
He said he hopes when people come to inscribe their letter in the Torah, they will be thinking about “what mitzvah is particularly important to me, what story or Parasha is particularly important to me.”
“Maybe it was important to a grandparent, maybe it’s something they’ve always kept with them, maybe there’s something in their lives or they say this is always something that I live by. It’s an interesting idea and I’m really looking forward to people thinking oh, you know I don’t necessarily consciously think about this but this has always been important to me,” Rabbi Levin continued.
Beth Torah has four Torahs now, not including the Holocaust Torah on display in the foyer that is on permanent loan from a synagogue in Britain. When the new Torah is complete it will become the congregation’s primary Torah.
Beth Torah’s leadership has made it clear that every single member of the congregation should have a chance to participate in this project, so no monetary value has been placed on the actual writing of a letter. An anonymous family has agreed to underwrite the cost of the project.
“We want everyone to be involved in the Torah writing project no matter what. We want them to have a piece of the Torah because this is a once-in-a-lifetime project,” Cole said.
Even though there is no official donation request, the brochure suggests dedication categories ranging from $36 for Friends of Torah all the way up to $36,000 and more.
“As a fundraiser this is very important. We have not done a major fundraiser in our congregation since the building fund was launched in 1994. In the Reform movement most synagogues do major fundraisers every five years,” Cole said. The amount the congregation hopes to raise has not been announced.
“The idea is that the experience will move you to a place where you want to donate. They don’t have to, but they’ll want to,” Hammontree added.
During Sunday’s opening ceremony, Rabbi Levin and Rabbi Rebecca Reice will scribe the opening letters along with Cole, the current president, and Eileen Garry, who is a past president and represents the founding members. In addition Kelly Kaplan, whose name was drawn on Erev Sukkot, will write a letter as the representative of the current members.
“On the last visit, June 8, all the parchment will have been sewn together and we will write the closing letters of the Torah. We will wrap it up in our wimple and we will dance and celebrate,” Hammontree noted.
Hammontree is amazed with the amount of excitement this project has generated as well as the number of people who have volunteered to help. She said it’s also bringing people together at a time when the congregation is in transition. Late last year Rabbi Levin announced that he will reduce his role at Congregation Beth Torah in the summer of 2014. An interim rabbi will begin serving the congregation at that time and a permanent rabbi will be hired, probably coming on board the summer of 2015.
“Beth Torah means house of Torah and this project forces us to come together and build community at a time when we need it most, which is figuring out who are we, what do we want to be and how are we going to get there,” Hammontree said. “If we reconnect with the roots of why Beth Torah was built, which is what this project essentially does, it reconnects each member, each family back to Beth Torah,” Hammontree said.
Cole agrees.
“Just like the name of this campaign, Renewing Our Promise, this project helps us plan for the future. By participating in this project, this makes all of our current members part of the future because this Torah will always be with us and this project will never happen again,” Cole said.
