Secret Codes Protect Ancient Torahs

An anonymous reader writes "A story on Wired News reports the problems Jewish synagogues have protecting their Torahs from theft. The Torah scrolls, containing the five books of Moses, are hand lettered over the course of a year, are often hundreds of years old, and can sell for $50,000 or more. But Judaic law "dictates that not one character can be added to the 304,805 letters of the Torah's text", which makes them untraceable and easily sold on the black market. Rabbinic authorities have recently approved two computer-based systems to make the scrolls traceable: one takes a digital fingerprint of a Torah, a second makes microperforations in the parchment that yield a unique identifier."

Comments

Non kosher torahs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oy!

Re:Non kosher torahs?

[Anonymous Coward]

oh

Oh Well

[joeybagadonuts]

So much for looking for a signed copy...

Re:Oh Well

[mabhatter654]

I want the one autographed by moses!!

Bo-ring

[Anonymous Coward]

Oy, these Rebbes today, so unimaginitive. Whatever happened to REAL anti-theft devices for holy artifacts, like the one on the Ark of the Covenant that melted your face off?

Re:Bo-ring

[Fallingcow]

Obviously, the Christians havn't done an apt-get update in a while, or they'd be upgraded to Koran 1.0. It's a total rewrite of the previous Bible and Torah software for the purpose of cleaner code and bugfixing. So far, it's also avoided the rampant forking problems that plagued most versions of Bible.

Note: It's a joke. Laugh. I'm not Christian, Muslim, or Jewish; I'm just carrying this conversation to its logical conclusion.

Re:Bo-ring

[haggar]

Not true: there are two known forks, sunni and shi'ite. These two versions are, unfortunately, incompatible and, if in proximity of each other, can cause the death of the users. Examples include Iraq and Pakistan.

They should enlist Slashdot's help!

[FlyByPC]

Contemplating stealing a holy text should lower the prospective thief's Karma enough that all you'd have to do would be to filter the entrance to the synagogue, yes? Easy enough to do on the forums!

Re:What is considered an addition to the text?

[magarity]

Can you buy a Torah at the bookstore? If so, does it have publisher's information?A quick check of Amazon.com shows a Torah with searchable online samples. The inside cover page says "Second Edition Newly Corrected". Whups! That doesn't bode well!

Uhhh...Amazon has them...

[GeneralEmergency]

...for just $14.95. No Lie. I'm going to stock up!

See!

Jokes only Hebrew speaking Jews will get...

[Avogadros Letter]

"Hey... at least now they'll have a Safer Torah!"

<bah-dum-ching! />

"... and if they got away with it, they'd be getting Loot of the Frum!"

<boo hissss />

Re:Only the Jews

[popo]

Fortunately for all of us, you'll probably mate with someone just like you.

...Its a Darwin joke.. you wouldn't understand.

Re:However

[Glonoinha]

A stolen bible?
Man, someone is going to Hell for that one.

Re:Only the Jews

[theskipper]

And if I can help only one ignorant slashdotter spell "flamebait" then it's worth it.

We'll work on spelling "troll" next article...

Always best to stay a release or so behind...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the code may be the same, but only because they destroyed all the copies but one.

And it STILL hasn't stolved the problem of a rift among the developers. Several of them got into fights over who really owned the source code and they've been having bitter IP disputes over it ever since as to who the true heir to it should be.

Besides, they still haven't worked out some of those jihad problems. So it's always best to stay one release or so behind and keep with something more stable. Granted, that doesn't mean problem free, but most (but not all) of the really violently horrible errors are gone from it by now and it's considerably more peaceful. Whereas this new version completely takes over your system and violently refuses to uninstall, no matter whether you've changed your mind or not. And changing your mind afterwards can be *really* painful with all those fatal exception errors and such.

Just a friendly warning :)

Re:This Gentile says Mod Parent Down -1, Troll

[popo]

> We all have a right to our opinion

Ah good.

My opinion is that you're an uneducated ass.

Oy! A young goy has broken the code

[craXORjack]

It says "Be sure to drink more Ovaltine."

Re:However

[cpt kangarooski]

Personally, my favorite is that everyone gets the same afterlife: listening to Moses teach the law. For good people, it's heaven, and for bad people, it's hell. ;)

BAN TORAH LIKE MEIN KAMPF ON Ebay

[Anonymous Coward]

Well-poisoning Christ-killers

dictates that not one character can be added...

[Kiyooka]

"...dictates that not one character can be added to the 304,805 letters of the Torah's text..."

how about two? :)

Not GPL compatable either.

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the right to make derived works?

Re:Holes make a Torah unkosher

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you really telling me that if I drop a Torah in a room, I can make all the religious Jewish people in that room fast for 40 (nonconsecutive) days?

Very cool :)

I think I've just found a foolproof weightloss program for the religious Jewish. I could be rich :)

Re:Only the Jews

[Anonymous Coward]

Those 'publican meals are like $1000 a plate. Jesus must have been fucking loaded! Maybe he just saved up so he could meet the majority whip and Laura Bush.

For sale ...

[eck011219]

Torah, first edition. Some wear and tear to tablets. Shipping not included. Call 555-1234, ask for Indy.