Advertisement On Sunday, members of Congregation Sons of Abraham at 1820 Main St. will do just that.
 |
After a ceremony in which the final 18 letters of the Torah will be written onto a scroll, the congregation will dance around the synagogue with the newly completed Torah scroll and other scrolls kept in the synagogue’s ark, located on the altar.
The completion of the new scroll is a milestone in the synagogue’s history. It replaces an early 1900s scroll from Poland whose ink was fading.
“What makes a Torah different from any other book is that the same breath God gave us in the creation, we take that breath and breathe it into the story,” said Rabbi Saul Prombaum of Congregation Sons of Abraham. “This is a handwritten document, which is a copy of a copy of a copy going all the way back.”
That’s all the way back to Deuteronomy 31:19, in which God gives the 613th and final command in the Torah: “Now write down for yourselves this song and teach it to the Israelites and have them sing it.”
And in another sense, the document goes all the way back before time.
“The mystical tradition says that the Torah pre-existed the creation of the world,” Prombaum said, “and that God looked into the Torah and used it as a blueprint for the creation of the world.”
Unlike Bibles that come off a printing press, a kosher Torah scroll is made slowly by a traditionally trained Torah scribe, such as Rabbi Kevin Hale.
While the new Torah was commissioned to a scribe in Israel, Hale, from Massachusetts, will write 17 of the last letters on Sunday, with Prombaum writing the 18th.
Hale said that while some of his work in restoring scrolls can be painstaking, there is also a delight that comes from being around Torah.
“Torah is this concept that can encompass all of the Bible and even all study and thought connected with it,” he said. “It’s almost like the way the word Tao or Zen might be used in another culture.”
But Torah is also specifically the five books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The story, told in 304,805 Hebrew letters, is cyclical, Hale said. Just before the Israelites enter the Promised Land, Jews roll up the scroll each year and begin again at Genesis.
On Sunday, Hale will lead the congregation in singing each of the final letters before he writes it onto the parchment, a re-enactment of God speaking the Torah to Moses and then Moses writing it down.
The old Torah scroll then will greet the new Torah scroll at the entrance to the synagogue, and the two will proceed in under a marriage canopy.
Why treat the Torah like a person?
“Because it’s the very source of our teaching,” Prombaum said. “What God did for the woman is God turned her into a life-giver. What is a woman? Someone who has the capacity to be creative like God and bear life. This Torah is the same thing spiritually. The Torah gives us our life. And so how could you not treat it with the utmost respect?”
Joe Orso works part time for the La Crosse Tribune and the Franciscan Spirituality Center. Opinions in this column are his own.
