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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."
The Masoretes would be proud of the preservation. I've seen the Dead Sea Scrolls digitally enhanced, so this should be very doable.
I bet you think you're the first person to question God.
Grouping all religions into one blanket statement is useless, as well. The evolve, just like organisms. And as we know, not all of anything "suck".
Even vacuums break at some point.
** "It's not my job to stand between the people talking to me, and the ones listening to me." -- Pego the Jerk
"Once it is recoevered, it isn't in pristine condition anymore."
Assuming we're only talking about problems from bad storage conditions, they're almost always fixable. Since fixing a Torah always cost less than writing a new one, this isn't as big a deal as you'd think. And, if they're going to sell the thing, you'd figure they're going to take at least a little care of it.
Torahs "go bad" from everyday use. My family, for instance, has a sefer Torah that we have on loan to a local synagogue. Every so often, they find a letter that's chipped off a bit (the ink is the worst culprit), and it has to be taken and repaired. It's not a big deal.
I think what I'm saying is, "pristine condition" is pretty unusual. Most synagogues will settle for
just "kosher", and be happy with it.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
The price represents about a year's labour for a Sofer (Jewish Scribe) and the cost of the parchament and ink itself. The cost of the materials is something like $5-10K, while the rest is the labour.
Most Sifrei Torah (Torah Scrolls) are not particularly ancient, although scrolls which are a couple of hundred years old are quite common.
-David Barak
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"Torah" means multiple things, thus the confusion.
1) = Pentatuch = Text of the 5 books of Moses
2) = "Teaching" or "Law" = the contents of all of Jewish Law
3) = shorthand for Sefer Torah = scroll containing (1) written on Parchament (skin of a kosher animal) by a Sofer (Jewish scribe) using special ink with the pieces of skin sewn together with Gid (sinew).
#3 is what TFA discusses. What you found in the bookstore is a bound copy of #1.
-David Barak
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Nope, sorry. The formulation of the ink is specified by Jewish Law, and has remained the same for a few thousand years.
Besides, individual signatures added to ink wouldn't scale in any case.
-David Barak
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"The following packages will be removed: 1) Bigotry"... kind of ironic that you yourself have made the remarks of a bigot. Just thought I'd let you know
Pre-theft security and post-theft security are hardly mutually exclusive. People who own expensive gems do keep them under lock and key. But they also x-ray them, just in case. Up until now, synagogues have been limited to just one kind of security, while both are valuable.
I'm a little suprised that no Slashdotter has commented on the irony of widespread theft of the book that's the original source for the "Thou Shalt Not Steal". Which would have allowed me to point out that the Christian Bible (of which the Jewish Torah is the first 5 parts) is the most widely shoplifted book!
Parent comment is a slap in the face of human culture, Jewish or no, religious or no, and it has no place on Slashdot.
--An 'If I Were a Rich Man'-singing " non-Jew.
Don't feed this troll, just mod them down, please.
No, although of course no work on Shabbat (fri sundown to sat sundown), and many of the holidays, however, it takes a few years to really get down the art (not that I've done that, but I did look into becoming a Sofer at one point), and mistakes are bad (at the very least, they take time to scratch/shave off, and if you make a mistake in G-d's name, then that whole page is wasted and has to be specially buried). I mean, it takes a year, and you'd get bored real quick, and make mistakes. And I don't think it's forbidden to work on more than one - I've known a Sofer who worked on a Torah for a while, then to break the monotony did some ketubot (marriage contracts) and mezuzot (the parchments that go into those little cylinder-like things on the doorways).
. Define sqrt(x) as something really evil like (x / rand()), and bury it deep. Watch your coworkers go nuts.
Well.. a Nazi war criminal and, well, Rachel Corrie....
l nice bulldozer...
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/invest.htm
At least people feel good about themselves when they go to bed, I guess.
Could you just take a really high resolution photograph of it? Doesn't everyone have different handwriting? Or are all of them meant to look the same?
You couldn't add an RFID to the scroll itself, although it might be possible to add it to the Atzei Hayyim (wood staves) on which the scroll is wound.
-David Barak
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You do realize that said refugees were first expelled from Israel? The jews of Israel, for the most part, came there in the last 100 years.
The halakha (Jewish Law) works like this - the text must be readable, and printed correctly. There can't be any holes inside the margins; however, holes or tears outside the margins are parmitted, although they're not mehudar (nice).
My synagogue, Kesher Israel has one particular Sefer Torah which has about a 2" tear over one of the columns at about Parshat Pinhas (Numbers 25:10 - 30:1), which is quite apparent every time we read it - it'd be quite hard to fix, so we're waiting until we can take that one out of circulation for a few months...
-David Barak
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I can't tell you the composition of the ink ('cause I don't know it, it's not a secret or anything), but it does act more like a paint.
The scolls themselves are made of sections of parchament, i.e skin from a kosher animal (cow, sheep, etc) which has been specially treated and scraped on one side. The Sofer (Scribe) has to draw lines to serve as letter guides, and then fill in the letters, in order, in a particular font called Ashirit (lit. "Assyrian," although the history of how that Hebrew font came to be called that is long and complicated).
-David Barak
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You don't get around religious doctrine on a technicality.
You realize that this is Judaism we're talking about, right? The religion that gave us the eruv and the kosher for Passover rolls?Current inks used for the writing of Torah scrolls (as well as mezuzas and tefillin pachments) are made from a blend of ferrous sulfate and tannic acid, which react chemically to produce a black color, and a bonding agent (gum arabic). This type of chemical ink will eventually turn a reddish-brown or rusty color, which eventually invalidates the item for ritual use; this tends to occur after 100 years or more, depending on use and environmental conditions. Prior to the invention is chemical inks, sofrim (ritual scribes) used inks in which the black color was the product of carbon, blended with a bonding agent. Since carbon based inks are chemically stable, they do not suffer from discoloration; the very old Torahs (500+ years) which still exist are written in these inks. As chemicals inks are easier/cheaper to make and superior to write with, sofrim switched to them several hundred years ago (well after they had become the most popular inks for general use, probably around the 5th century).
lame, mod parent down, has affilate link to try to make money off of people clicking it.
7 600151
here's the real link:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/082
The calligraphy isn't terribly challenging, but it is slow and must meet numerous precise requirements. The hebrew letter 'bet', for example, requires approximately 7-9 separate strokes to complete, depending on technique; even the simplest letters take at least 3 strokes and the most complicated letter can take a dozen or more. Basically the sofer "draws" the letters rather then writes them. This is all according to the calligraphic tradition of ashkenazi (northern european) jews; the calligraphic tradition of sefardic (mediterranean and middle-eastern) jews is simpler, more akin to writing, and is accordingly faster and so less expensive. In addition, once a torah is written, it must be checked for accuracy and adherence to the requirements of halacha (jewish law).
The laws of writting a kosher Torah are quite complex. For example with 6 exceptions each page must begin with a specific letter "Vav".
There are complex laws for how a Torah is written, read etc. If you drop one of the floor everyone in the room is required to fast for 40 days (generally Monday and Thursday for the next 20 weeks). This is an object for us that is increadably special to us.
I should point out that most Jews I know also own at least one printed version with commentary etc. In my case its a Hebrew/English translation but as I live in Israel many folks have a Hebrew only version.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
Torah scrolls are very long, must longer than one animal. Also, it's possible to replace a segment of a Torah, so if we by convention started taking the DNA of the first segment, someone could just have that replaced.
Which I guess might make sofrim (scribes) a bit suspicious when they keep having to write the creation story...
Thank God for evolution.
I know it happened.My grandfather served in germany in WW2 and i looked in his face as he told me about freeing those in the camps.How the men had to be careful not to give them but a little of their rations because the living skeletons were so starved that rich food could cause them to go into shock.Their bodies had gone so long without that the rich G.I food could overload their systems.They had to slowly nurse them back to health starting with light broth and slowly working up. My grandfather was a truly honorable man.If you would have seen his eyes when he talked about what he saw--Then You'd know it happened too.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
although you're part right, Yule (and Modresnacht, Thorrablot, Widvinterblot, and the other's around that time) are Pagan, but they aren't wiccan.
Paganism and Wicca aren't interchangible terms, Hel, Wicca doesn't even fall under the Pagan umbrella. (neopaganism != paganism).
Though Xmas IS a christian holliday, it just assimilated some of the old traditions (like decorating a pine tree on Modresnacht, for example, or the relative timing over the other festivals at that time of year, and yeah, that's where the bunnies and eggs come in on easter, etc). That's how the old ways survived, and that's not rally something to get pissed off about, imo.
Actually, both NASA and the Soviets used Pencils. Lead pencils, without Graphite. And Snopes is your friend: http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp
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I would guess that the thief uses an especially dastardly and cunning ruse, something along the lines of avoiding saying "Would you like to buy this stolen Torah" and saying something like "My client has a Torah for sale" instead.
Except you're missing the whole bit about that people don't generally do well in not being evil, at least in some small ways, and hence need something further (Jesus Christ) to be OK with God rather than just trying to be good.
And it's reasonably generalising to treat the Bible as one thing. It's a collection of books with a very varying style and purpose. There's everything from Jewish law (important for historical reference, nevermind other issues) to a Music book (most Christian hymns are derived from Psalms, nevermind that some of the closest scriptural links with the New Testament are with the Psalms) to prophecy, history (the whole careful detailing of Israel's relationship with God is/should be very instructive to Christians) and theology.
I think "don't be evil" is fairly indistinct even as a "gist" of the Bible. Perhaps you could have a subtitle of "Man and God" to guess some of the subject matter, that'd be at least someways more accurate.
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