Jewish tradition says that God delivered the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai.
Torah sofer, or scribe, Alberto I. Attia, of San Diego, delivered a new Torah scroll to Congregation B’nai Israel in ceremonies Sunday. It was an event few people ever get to experience.
“To bring a new Torah is relatively rare for most congregations,” Attia said. “It’s a joyous event, like bringing a new baby into the world.”
Assisted by 18 members of B’nai Israel, Attia completed the last 18 words of the Justine Herzog Memorial Torah, a gift from Helen Herzog Zell, of Chicago, on behalf of the Zell Family Foundation. The gift was in memory of Justine Herzog, Helen Zell’s mother and a longtime member of B’nai Israel.
A Torah scroll, the most-sacred text in Judaism, contains the Five Books of Moses — Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.
Creating a Torah is an expensive and painstaking task, since every letter must be perfectly written in exactly the same way Torahs have been written for thousands of years.
“It is close to 3,500 years from the time that Moses received the Torah, and letter by letter, word by word, the content is exactly the same,” Attia said. “We must be very meticulous because we are passing the Torah from generation to generation.”
There are exactly 304,805 letters in every Torah. Each is handwritten in elaborate Hebrew calligraphy on parchment made from the skin of a kosher animal. “Every word we write with utmost concentration and respect and with a feeling of holiness,” Attia said.
Torah scribes write with quills made from feathers of a kosher bird. “There is a very strong custom to avoid writing with a metal pen,” Attia said. “Metal is used in the making of war. The Torah was given to the world for shalom (peace), which is the opposite of war.”
Sunday’s Torah completion ceremony, called a Torah Siyyum, was a festive service with music by cantorial soloist Ellen Steigman and the New Orleans Panorama Jazz Band.
The ceremony began with the blowing of the shofar by Steve Beck, LSU professor of composition and computer music. “Blowing the shofar is one of the calls to worship,” B’nai Israel’s Rabbi Corie Yutkin said. “It tells us that something significant is happening — proclaiming to the people.”
Beck led a procession into the sanctuary followed by Yutkin and Rabbi Emeritus Barry Weinstein. Attia entered carrying the scroll under a chuppah, or canopy, handmade by Sue Freedman.
Eighteen children from preschool through college-age followed, each carrying a poster of the last 18 letters of the Torah. At the altar to welcome the new Torah were four of the five old Torahs, each held by a member of the congregation.
As the 18 words were written, congregation members explained the meaning of their letters.
Zell put her hand on the shoulder of the scribe as he wrote “Yisrael,” the Hebrew word for Israel and the final word of Deuteronomy.
“It is the completion of an entire scroll, passed intact for 3,500 years,” Attia said. “What a heritage.”
The original gift from the Zell Family Foundation was a donation of money with the stipulation that the congregation choose how best to honor Justine Herzog’s memory.
“The money was not to go back into the operating budget,” said Lynn Weill, chairwoman of the Justine Herzog Legacy Committee established by the board to carry out Helen Zell’s wishes to “create a special program or directed fund that will . . . reflect the values she (Justine Herzog) held dear when she was alive.
“Helen wanted us to determine how best to use the gift to honor Justine,” Weill said.
Weill’s committee of Robbie Rubin, Mary Ann Sternberg, Susan Kantrow, Ralph Bender and Yutkin decided to use most of the gift to create the Justine Herzog Memorial for Lifelong Learning, a donor-advised fund to award annual grants to fund programs that qualify for lifelong learning.
Commissioning a new Torah was Yutkin’s idea after a Torah scribe had recently determined that the congregation’s five existing Torahs were badly in need of repair and that only two of the five were actually repairable.
“The Torah contains all of the teachings and values of Judaism that we believe Justine embodied — a love of people, a love of teaching, a love of community and a love of Judaism,” the committee wrote in its proposal to Zell.
“A Torah is part of that idea of lifelong learning,” Yutkin said. “A Torah is passed from generation to generation as education is passed from generation to generation.”
The new Torah is the first Torah commissioned in the congregation’s 150-year history, Weill said. One Torah originally came from Poland, another was rescued from Czechoslovakia during the Holocaust and the remaining three are believed to have come from congregations in Mississippi that are no longer in existence.
“It’s a big deal to have a brand new Torah,” said Yutkin, who had the responsibility of finding a Torah scribe to write the new Torah. She selected Attia with assistance from a rabbi in California under whom she had served.
It takes a year working full-time to write a Torah. New Torahs range in price from $20,000 to $50,000, Yutkin said.
Following the completion of the new Torah, members of the congregation and guests waited for the ink to dry and then watched as the Torah was rolled up, dressed in its new cover and placed in the ark with the other Torahs.
As the last word was written, Attia spoke on the importance of using the Torah to educate and bring blessings to future generations.
“There are children here today who will be able to attest to their great-great-grandchildren that they were here when this Torah was dedicated,” he said.
