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!

Oh Well

[joeybagadonuts]

So much for looking for a signed copy...

Re:Oh Well

[mabhatter654]

I want the one autographed by moses!!

Re:Only the Jews

[peculiarmethod]

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.

However

[MiKM]

It doesn't solve the problem of theft. If one is stolen, it might take years to recover it, if at all. Once it is recoevered, it isn't in pristine condition anymore. More attention should be focused on solving the problem itself than making it easier to apprehend the criminals.

Re:However

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I think the point is to help prospective buyers know if they are buying a "hot" item or not. If it can't be authenticated, or the seller is unwilling to authenticate it, then it makes it harder to sell.

Re:However

[Erwos]

"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

Re:However

[fm6]

If just a few people ID their scrolls, then yeah, it's only good for recovery. (And recovery is very very unlikely -- there's no Torah Police to go around inspecting everybody's scrolls.) But if these IDs become universal -- and they probably will, given the amount of money involved -- it will suddenly become very hard to fence an "hot" scroll.

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!

Re:However

[Glonoinha]

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

Re:However

[lawpoop]

" 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.

Can you enlighten me as to the type of ink this is that chips? Does it act more like a paint than a dye? What kind of material can a Torah be made of?

Re:However

[Adult film producer]

Do jews believe in Hell?

Sort of.. the jewish idea of hell is more-or-less compatible with the Christian(catholic predominantly) idea of purgatory. Hell for the Jew is a tormented but temporary place for their souls, but not permanent/everlasting punishment for their "crimes" against God. Some will have to endure greatest punishment in the jewish "purgatory" but they will always be released. Their souls are to be "recycled" or reincarnated yet again until they reach perfection (another matter for discussion)... the latter dogma I mentioned as you might notice is diametrically opposed to the conventional christian understanding of the human spirit & soul.. (ie. you're damned to hell for ever lasting time unless you repent and accept jesus..)

Chrisitanity and Judaism don't have much to do with each other, except for their common history and father figures. Their philosophy and belief set is as different as Buddhists are from Christians. Luckily Jews are not born into sin like Christians are... this gives them so much more latitude in their life :)

Re:However

[thegameiam]

" 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.

Can you enlighten me as to the type of ink this is that chips? Does it act more like a paint than a dye? What kind of material can a Torah be made of?

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

Re:However

[MostlyHarmless]

To muddy things up, though: Judaism is not very big on literal readings of the Bible: partly because there really isn't such a thing, and partly because of a strong oral tradition (i.e. the Talmud) that interprets things, sets out laws, etc. So it is true that certain bible verses discount the possibility of an afterlife; however, one probably could find verses suggesting the opposite if one wanted to. And all that doesn't have very much to do with what Judaism itself thinks about it.

In regards to *that* -- commentaries speak all the time about "this world" and "the world to come", but there isn't a single, universally-accepted theology about what that's supposed to mean. The grandparent was essentially correct in that there is a traditional Jewish view of a sort of purgatory; however, there are a half-dozen other ideas as well. Compared to Christianity, Judaism simply doesn't focus on the afterlife as much.

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. ;)

Re:However

[Anonymous Coward]

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).

Re:However

[dfn_deux]

I would generally tend to disagree with the premise of your argument based on a few simple reasons...

1. "Race" is not any sort of scientifically recognized term for subdividing within a species. So arguing that one thing is a "race" and another is not is ultimately a fruitless endevour...

That's because most human variation falls within, not between populations. About 85% of all genetic variation can, on average, be found within any local population, be they Swedes, Kikuyu, or Hmong. About 94% can be found within any continental population, consistent with what the Rosenberg Science study found. In fact, there are no characteristics, no traits, not even one gene that turns up in all members of one so-called race yet is absent from others.

2. Nearly all of my Jewish acquaintences draw a distinction between those people who are "ethnic jews" and "religious jews". Which seems to account for a strong self identification as being a distinct "ethnic group" not necessarily defined by a religous dogma or other codified belief structure...

By slightly over 3 to 1, Israeli Jews choose the ethnic Jew (43%) over the religious practitioner (13%). However, another 32% of Israeli Jews find both equally Jewish. Therefore, even in Israel, a country with strict adherence to Jewish law, nearly half of Israeli Jews would consider someone without a Jewish mother as Jewish. The question of "who is a Jew" has been the center of debate recently, with the Orthodox establishment only recognizing someone as Jewish who was born to a Jewish mother (or converted by a Orthodox Rabbi)

Normally I wouldn't even stick my foot in the door at commenting on a thread such as this which is guranteed to draw more flames than most, but I'd be hard pressed to believe that anyone can really come up with any evidence contrary to either of those two points. I mean heck, even the Israeli "right of return" is based largely on blood lines (Jewish mothers have Jewish children, regardless of their religion...) and not faith...

Re:However

[hairyfeet]

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.

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

[spiz21]

"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

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.

How will it look like?

[DegeneratePR]

Anyone have an idea how the Torahprints will look like?

Basic Cryptography

[WAR-Ink]

Braille MD5 sums. No doubt this idea was the Holy Grail of cryptography.

But, a character is a character, whether it is holes punched in paper or pen and ink. I think this is cheating.

Or perhaps this is just religious dogma getting in the way of the greatest idea in secruity codes since Leonidas scrapped off the wax.

Re:Basic Cryptography

[superpulpsicle]

Every race have endured beatings. You make it seem like Jews got the worst. At least their suffering was documented.

Try the Aztecs, they were wiped out to the point where no one is left to tell the story from their side.

Related

[pHatidic]

There is a tiny town in Israel, iirc called svadt, that has an artform called microcalligraphy which is not practiced anywhere else in the world. They are able to fit the entire Torah onto a single page, they they make the torah into a design.

This is the first example that was found by Googling for microcalligraphy. I wonder if this technique could also be used on those works of art, which are extremely rare and expensive but also quite beautiful.

Compressed data in headers as added characters?

[metachor]

If you consider the text of the Torah to be the body of a message being transmitted, then would not an included digital fingerprint or series of microperforations be additional data included in a header (in this case, for authentication purposes)? I know that a digital fingerprint or a series of microperforations are not precisely the same thing as adding more Hebrew characters to the body text of the Torah; but is it not conceptually possible to represent the pattern of data included in the fingerprint or the perforations within the same Unicode scheme as Hebrew characters are represented? Thus in effect would these unique authentication identifiers actually transgress the rule against adding more characters?

Max Cohen would be ashamed.

Pardon my Ignorance

[Anonymous Coward]

But can't the identification be before the holy part so while on the same physical object are different things. The law is against the alteration of the law and not a name. The Christian Bible has the same warning, as does the Koran, and they both have ID in the beginnings that does not detract from the laws.

What is considered an addition to the text?

[magarity]

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

Just a few quick questions:

Is putting some kind of ownership label on the inside cover really 'adding to the text'? I don't think anyone would mistake "From the Library of Hiram Goldstein" as part of the actual text. Can you buy a Torah at the bookstore? If so, does it have publisher's information? Further, 'character' is pretty specific to alphabetic writing. I wonder if a Chinese idiograph or Egyptian hieroglyph count as a 'character'?

Re:What is considered an addition to the text?

[Erwos]

"Is putting some kind of ownership label on the inside cover really 'adding to the text'?"

There are huge, hand-written scrolls. There's no inside cover, and, no, you can't buy them at the bookstore. They cost 50 grand new, for crying out loud!

-DMZ

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!

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

Re:What is considered an addition to the text?

[entrigant]

Further, 'character' is pretty specific to alphabetic writing. I wonder if a Chinese idiograph or Egyptian hieroglyph count as a 'character'?

You don't get around religious doctrine on a technicality... you don't say to god "well you didn't say no hieroglyphs!" Besides these are rules these people willingly abide by, and their intent is to abide by the spirit of them. What is the point of following a religion if you just tear it to shreds because it isn't written in legalise?

Re:What is considered an addition to the text?

[Lehk228]

IIRC there is a great Jewish tradition of getting around dogma on technicality, such as a prohibition against counting people in attendance at the synogogue(sp?) and so it is "not 1, not 2, not 3"

Reference 1 Reference 2

Re:What is considered an addition to the text?

[coaxial]

Further, 'character' is pretty specific to alphabetic writing. I wonder if a Chinese idiograph or Egyptian hieroglyph count as a 'character'?

You're incorrect. "Character" is generic, "letter" is not. As seen in "Chinese characters". The term "glyph" is equally generic.

Chinese characters aren't strictly pictograms or even ideograms. Some characters combinations of other characters where some parts of the compound character are used hint at the proper pronouciation.

Also not all words, are represented by a single glyph. The word "da4", which means "big", can be combined with "xiao3", which means "small", to create "da4xiao3" which means "size". (The numbers after the syllables indicate the tone.) Some characters must be used in combination with others, because the individual character has no intrinsic meaning.

Further complicating matters is when Western words are transliterated into Chinese. (Japanese and Korean words sometimes have Chinese characters already associated with them. It appears to me that in the few cases I know the words also have a common ancestor, but I'm not a Asian linguist.) While the meanings of the individual characters or even the combination of characters carry little weight, care must still be used lest you transliterate "George Bush" to "Robot Monkey Carburetor", or even worse, "Butt Fucker". For instance, the fast food chain "Subway" is transliterated to something that sounds like "sa ba wei", and means "10,000 Tastes" or something like that, instead of "di4xia4tie3" which means "underground train".

Explaining why creating nonsense words that bear a striking resembelence to English words in order to prevent saying something stupid in a non-English langauge is left as an exercise to the reader. Please note, that the "Mexican Chevy Nova" story is a myth. It assumes Spanish speakers don't have enough command over their native langauge to distinguish between "nova" and "no va", unlike English speakers ability to distribuish between "notable" and "no table". Futhermore the myth hinges on the listener to have ignorance of the fact that the Mexican government sells gasoline under the brand name "Nova".

Thus concludes your linguistic lesson.

Re:What is considered an addition to the text?

[babble123]

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?

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

Just like diamonds

[dr_dank]

When I bought a diamond for an engagement ring, it came with a gemprint; a card showing the stones unique identifer when light is passed through it. No two diamonds are exactly the same, so light will not pass through two diamonds the same way. Very similar to what they're doing with the torah scrolls.

Re:Torah Identification

[thegameiam]

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

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:Amazing, two systems of justice...

[Anonymous Coward]

> What makes Jews so special?

Well... there's this I guess...

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/03/science/03gene.h tml

Holes make a Torah unkosher

[Yonkeltron]

The very act of putting holes (however small) that are not used for binding pieces of parchment to the other ones, might render a Torah unfit for use! As an observant Jew, I'd be a little bit skeptical about reading from one...

Re:Holes make a Torah unkosher

[Glonoinha]

How about tweaking the spacing of the holes used in the binding process?
Maybe a little binary encoding by skipping some of the holes.

Re:Holes make a Torah unkosher

[cdwiegand]

Except that a) not all Rabbis will recognize that ruling (in Judaism, there is no pope or other central organizing figure - there are organizations, heirarchies, but in the end none of them is TRULY authoritative, although I've been hearing about a sanhedrin, and if that was established, then it would be pretty authoritative), and b) not all Jews will recognize what those Rabbis rule. In Judaism, you're SUPPOSED to question authority, and not just swallow it down. It'll be awhile (give it a few hundred years) for it to be either globally accepted or rejected. Halachah changes SLOWLY..

Re:Holes make a Torah unkosher

[thegameiam]

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

Re:Holes make a Torah unkosher

[ScentCone]

As an observant Jew, I'd be a little bit skeptical about reading from one...

OK, so I'm entirely too Scando-Anglo in my heritage (considering the topic), and specifically not religious... so this will seem, well, cheeky (at best).

How does any modification to the physical nature of the book/scroll, other than a change that actually alters the words therein, change the message? Meaning, Shakespeare is still Shakespeare whether in paperback, parchement, or HTML. Aren't the (apparently never changing) 300k-some characters in the Torah, well, the same every time? I understand that handling a carefully loved artifact can help put on into an introspective mood, but surely one with invisible changes (microscopic holes) isn't damaging to your spirituality - isn't content king, as it were?

Now, all that being said, how about high-res digital images of a few of the pages? If they're hand made, no two are exactly the same, and matching a high-contrast calligraphic image against a database would surely be no harder than matching digitized finger prints, right?

Anyway, I guess I'm just scratching my head about the "unfit for use" part. Surely the things Moses said and did, for example, aren't any different if the very same words telling the story are on a piece of paper with microscopic holes you can't even see? And, aren't whatever cultural and contemporary spiritual lessons one is supposed to glean from reading those words what really matter? I'd always thougth that "observant Jews" (as you put it) would be more about the message than the medium. But then, I suppose this is really a larger-scale, lukewarm semi-rant about orthodoxy and dogma in general - no need to pick on any particular flavor, but I saw your comment and thus you win my rant-prize for the evening.

Re:Holes make a Torah unkosher

[Anonymous Coward]

How does any modification to the physical nature of the book/scroll, other than a change that actually alters the words therein, change the message?

I am not jewish but I think I can answer this one.

The Rabbis wanted to insure that the Torah remaind unaltered and true. Damage to the scroll could change the content. Obviously a large tear could remove words (content), but even a small hole could damage the content. For example a small hole could turn a U into a J.

Re:Holes make a Torah unkosher

[Zachary Kessin]

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.

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 :)

Sell to whom?

[Locke2005]

Who would pay $50,000 for a stolen Torah? Surely somebody that would place that much value on a book would actually have read the book and be attempting to follow the laws therein, especially the one about "Thou shalt not steal" -- or encourage others to steal! I can't beleive people could buy this without the provence of them documented, and then claim they just didn't know it was stolen.

Re:Sell to whom?

[CmdrGravy]

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.

Re:OSS?

[WindBourne]

That is about as real as somebody complaining about OSS being used In Syria, China, Cuba, and North Korea, while ignoring the fact that each of these countries are currently based on MS Windows XP. And to make matters interesting, these were sold by MS directly to the countries.

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...

Re:Only $50,000?

[cdwiegand]

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).

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.

Re:Only the Jews

[fishbowl]

"And the educated have always had more sex, money, power and influence."

I'm quite certain the uneducated have more sex. Those in the ruling classes always have more societal structures in place, that are aimed at *preventing* sex.

The money, power and influence parts, I won't argue with. But peasants definitely have more sex.

high resolution photo

[clockwise_music]

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?

Re:high resolution photo

[neomac]

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.

Re:high resolution photo

[twohorses]

I don't know about "no difference". Some sofers make nice even letters. Others start the line well enough but then buncheverythingup as they get to the end. Others realize they're going to get to the end of the line too quickly and stretch out some letters (which is allowed) to the point where they're hard to read. And on one torah I read from, the sofer went crazy with the crowns. We called that the 'trippy torah'. Here's a link to a sofer's site with lots of pictures and explanations: http://www.bayit02.freeserve.co.uk/index.html

RFID

[thegameiam]

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

Oy! A young goy has broken the code

[craXORjack]

It says "Be sure to drink more Ovaltine."

Re:Amazing, two systems of justice...

[gomoX]

Sure, they are teh 3vil!!
For fuck's sake. To a palestinian, you are a foreign bastard who took his territory and gave it to the Jewish people, the same Jewish people he's in war and kills your people since you can remember. Of course they're shouting death.

And you know what's wrong with them, besides war crimes and unbelievable suffering and pain? Lack of perspective. Peace can't be achieved because most can't see any further than this.

So do you, as far as I can tell. Please, this people are not lunatics, no one is. They have been raised by a different culture, but it's not a bad one. Fanatics are just as bad there as in the US, except they don't have the FBI to kick their asses whenever they feel like it. They live in a society mandated by inertial hate they got from previous generations.

To a palestinian, you are much more of a son of a bitch than he is to you. It's just that they gather on the streets to shout it instead of reelecting their badass president to "kick some ass" and having the senate give him unlimited military budget.

Think about it. Pretty much everything happens for a reason.

Not just ancient but any Torah

[gelfling]

$50,000 or more is for a Torah that is used every day. A truly ancient e.g. more than 5 or 6 hundred years old scroll or a Torah from eastern Europe before 1800 would literally be priceless. Pick a large number, double it, add 4 zeros, double it again.

Theft is not a huge problem but it is a problem because scrolls are so expensive and some shuls simply can't afford them. So they look for one of questionable provenance. Also scrolls do wear out and have to be buried and replaced eventually.

Re:OSS?

[Puff Daddy]

You can base countries on MS Windows XP? What was sold by MS directly to the countries? Who is complaining about OSS in Syria, China, Cuba, and North Korea? How does any of this make matters interesting, or relate to "matters" at all?

sinner

[Doc Ruby]

You're so sure of your insane lies portraying Jews as atheists that you post as Anonymous Coward. It's obvious that it is you who does not believe in god, or at least not in a righteous one. You speak in god's name, but don't even have the courage to use a flimsy Slashdot user ID. Anyone else reading your racist lies should immediately be able to tell what you are. And that the "future purpose" to which you allude, the popular racist fantasy of the gory sacrifice of Jews in an apocalypse, is the hallmark of the rest of you deranged Christian Taliban buying up such godporn as the sick "Left Behind" series. Which goes right along with your giveaway line slandering Catholics. Every generation has its excuse for people hating Jews, rather than themselves, for "betraying god". Yours are not new, but they're still disgusting. When you admit the truth, that you're covering up your fear of burning in hell by finding a surrogate in the Jews, you'll have at least a chance at salvation. Without that, you're just a sick fool lying about things you can't understand.

BAN TORAH LIKE MEIN KAMPF ON Ebay

[Anonymous Coward]

Well-poisoning Christ-killers

What about DNA?

[sga.busboy]

From what I've read, the scrolls are made from animal skins. Couldn't you just start a DNA bank of the skins? That would eliminate the adding character issue.

Re:What about DNA?

[snoyberg]

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...

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? :)

Re:dictates that not one character can be added...

[pla]

how about two? :)

I know you meant that as a joke, but I really have to wonder how the use of "microperforated parchment" counts as magically less of a violation of the rule than your own suggestion.

If you take it literally, then your own suggestion would work just fine. If you interpret it to mean "don't add any more information", the suggested fix violates the rule just as much. If we allow something in between the two, it seems silly to need to resort to microperformations - Why not a plain ol' watermark (with no characters in it, of course, just a low-contrast picture)?

And if we want to resort to high-tech, since apparently god doesn't object to the use of science to circumvent his rules - They make these things out of dead animals. Animals come right from the factory with a unique ID already encoded into every single cell in their bodies...

Re:Only the Jews

[hairyfeet]

Actually,Xmas is wiccan.Look up yule.The catholics stole it when they were converting pagans and added a christ element.I had to write this as my sister is a wiccan and hates when people think it's a christian holiday. I think all religion is for scaring peasants,Personally. And thanks for getting rid of the craptcha.As someone who has trouble seeing those things,I thank You.

Not GPL compatable either.

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the right to make derived works?

Re:Pen vs Pencil

[moeffju]

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

What is the Bible

[zoney_ie]

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.

Photo Solution

[SeanDuggan]

Actually, if you RTFAed, one of the techniques listed does essentially that, albeit also analyzing the photo to determine handwriting style. The problem faced, apparently, is convincing the jury to consider this as true evidence that the two scrolls are the same. Handwriting analysis has been in courts (and public consciousness) long enough that people generally accept that you can show that a particular set of whorls and jots is characteristic of a particular author. Digital photographs... the precision involved in these scrolls means that the text is practically identical between scrolls, at least until you start getting on a very high level of magnification. Theoretically, the background could be analyzed, but I don't know how certain it is that the animal skin would remain looking the same over a few months or years of exposure to the ambient environment.

I wonder whether they could do a DNA analysis of the animal skin... I would imagine that for any given scroll, it's probably composed of a number of different individual animals and the mix is probably not the same for any given scroll. The catches would be a) DNA testing is not horribly cheap still, and b) DNA testing AFAIK, is still a mildly destructive process with dead materials.

For sale ...

[eck011219]

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