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

Re:Only $50,000?

[thegameiam]

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

Re:What is considered an addition to the text?

[thegameiam]

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!

"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