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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."
"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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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!
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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While each scribe, called a "sofer" (long o) has unique calligraphic penmanship, the form of the letters are highly detailed and specific to the calligraphy of writing a Torah. To go from one Torah to the next you would see no difference in the way each letter is formed.
Responsibility is the punishment for compentenc
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).