Expert repairs Utah synagogue’s sacred scrolls — It’s ‘more than calligraphy. It is Torah magic’

If your Torah scroll has cracked or faded letters, who you gonna call?

A sofer.

This Jewish craftsperson is trained in the art of copying holy texts.

Thus, Rabbi Samuel Spector of Congregation Kol Ami, Utah’s largest synagogue, engaged Rabbi Moshe Druin of North Miami Beach, Fla., to spend this week in the Beehive State, working over 10 sacred scrolls.

On Monday night, Druin, president of Sofer On Site, offered a crowd of about 70 attendees, many of them members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a glimpse of what his exacting work entails.

A Torah scroll is handwritten in Hebrew, using kosher ink, drawn with a feather pen on parchment made from the skin of kosher animals, the ebullient Druin explained, standing behind his work table, telling stories and gesturing excitedly.

Every letter in Judaism’s holy book — which roughly corresponds to the first five books of the Bible and when laid out flat would be the approximate length of a football field — “is counted and calculated,” Druin said. Each letter must be drawn by following strict standards for size, style and layout.

In addition to Torah scrolls, sofers also produce the handwritten texts for tefillin (black leather boxes some Jewish men wear on their heads or arms that contain verses) and mezuza (small parchments with 22 lines from Deuteronomy attached to doors) he said, and the Book of Esther.

A scribe must be able to hold his (nearly all are men) hand steady, sit in a chair for hours at a time, Druin said, and be fluent in the “art, wisdom and knowledge of writing Torah.”

Doing it is a religious act, he said. It is “more than calligraphy. It is Torah magic.”

Who was the first scribe?

Becoming a sofer requires years of study and practice, but there are no classes to take or universities to attend.

The only way to become one is to be trained by one. The first scribe was Moses, whose “teacher was God,” Druin quipped. “I’m in God’s profession.” It takes thousands of hours, even years, to learn to copy God’s name without a single mistake.

Any other flub can be fixed, Druin said, but getting God’s name even slightly off (a broken letter, a wrong angle) is “a desecration.”

The oldest known intact Torah scroll is 800 years old, recently found in Italy, and it has the same lettering, spacing and styling as ones completed this year — like a carbon copy, he said. “Sofers are not writing anything they heard or what they thought. They are just copying.”

After each scroll is completed, it is examined for accuracy by two other scribes, reading side by side, and also checked by a computer scan in a process that takes weeks.

“A Torah scroll can last indefinitely if properly cared for,” Druin said. “But if one letter has fallen off or is cracked or faded, it will be deemed unfit for rituals.”

Growing up in Israel, the cartoonist-turned-sofer said seeing a photocopy of the ancient Hebrew lettering “was love at first sight. … It was Torah magic, working every day with wonder.”

He summed it up with a Jewish saying, “Only when you touch a Torah will Torah touch you.”

Torah’s place in family traditions

The need to keep Torah scrolls in perfect condition is crucial, but the cost of hiring a sofer is pretty steep, Spector said. Congregants have been saving for it for years so the rabbi has set up a way for them and others to help underwrite the project by sponsoring a letter, word, verse, portion or book.

Seeing the lettering on some — including a 400-year-old scroll smuggled out of Portugal during the infamous Inquisition — was, Spector said, like looking at a computer copy that had “run out of toner.”

A Torah scroll has been handed down in his family for “thousands of years,” the Utah rabbi said, in the same way Druin does his work.

To illustrate the significance of the handwritten text, the Utah rabbi told the story of the “Yanov Torah” he knew from his rabbinic training in Los Angeles.

There were members of a Jewish community in Poland during World War II, and when the Nazis rounded them up, they tore the scroll into pieces, hid them under their clothes, and buried the parchment in various places in the concentration camp.

After the war, a survivor dug up all the pieces, found someone who could sew them back together, and enlisted a person to bring the reconstructed parchment to the U.S.

“That was the scroll I was trained on,” said Spector, who lost scores of Ukrainian family members during the war, “so that I could remember how important the Torah was during the Holocaust.”

There have been many times “when we dance and sing with the Torah,” he said, “but there have also been many moments when we’ve smuggled the Torah around and continued to read it.”

It is a “connection to our past, not just an heirloom, but our guide on how to live our lives in the future,” the rabbi said. “The antidote to that darkness in our history and in world history is the light that comes from this book. Even if it costs us our lives, we need to keep passing this.”

Interfaith moment

Todd Zenger, president of the Canyon Rim LDS Stake, was moved by Spector’s feelings about the scrolls.

“I was impressed by the personal connection he has for his Torah scrolls and how his congregation feels for theirs,” said Zenger, who attended Monday’s presentation.

The whole evening was, the Latter-day Saint leader said, “precisely the kind of interfaith event that helps us better understand and respect and love each other.”

Spector reflected the same sentiment back to Latter-day Saint attendees.

One goal for Utah Jews in hosting events like this, he said, “is to teach people and to spread tolerance, acceptance and love in our world.”