SANCTITY IS IN THE ORDINARY THINGS

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Silk Screen Printing
A Sofer, using a pen, will shape letters as he applies ink to the parchment, one at a time. The same scribe does the same thing on masse by pushing ink through a Silk Screen and then pushing those letters onto the parchment. Rabbi Abadi, a well known and highly accomplished Posek, greatly praised by some of the greatest rabbis of the previous generation encourages this method for producing Sifrey Torah.

Rabbi Abadi was born in Venezuela and moved at a very young age, together with his parents, back to Tiberias. He learned in Yeshivat Chevron in Jerusalem. At the age of 19, the "Chazon Ish" sent him to study in Lakewood, NJ, under the famed Rabbi Aharon Kotler.
Rabbi Abadi is a renowned Posek whose students are accomplished rabbis across the globe. 
Rabbi Abadi was the leading Posek for the entire Lakewood community.
In 1980 Rabbi Abadi opened a Halacha Kollel in Lakewood, transferring it in 1993 to Har Nof, Jerusalem and has since moved back to Lakewood NJ 2009.

Our most sacred treasure is constructed from the most ordinary materials. Taking something that has almost no value and imbuing it with sanctity is a message for life, and the manner in which we can and should elevate even our most ordinary activities.

DNA Of Our Identity
A Sefer Torah, the five books of Moses (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy) in which are included The Ten Commandments, are the words of G-d dictated to Moses on Mount Sinai, in plain view of all 12 Tribes, the Sons of Israel. It is the most sacred of secrets, the DNA of our identity and the map of our destiny. We cherish, honour and show obeisance to these words of G-d written on plain parchment, applied with archaic goose feathers, using plain ordinary ink and drawn without pretence, sophistication or embellishments. Its focus is entirely on the message of its 304,805 letters its sparse and cryptic words and their interpretation.

Moses Spoke With G-d Face To Face
We say that Moses conversed with the G-d, as would two friends. In spite of this, Moses is known as the humblest of men. Perhaps we should not say, “in spite of this” but “because of this”. Humility is the only device that will permit the removal of those obstacles that impede our soul’s urge to commune with G-d. The Torah testifies, “Moses was the most humble of all people” and precisely because of Moses’ humility could he and did he utterly embrace and unreservedly bond with G-d.

Words And Letters Are Flames
Those letters are described by our Sages OBM, as leaping letters of flames. They are like flames that appear to reach ever upwards in their attempt to escape this world and ascend to a higher sphere but are held unwillingly in check by their earthly anchor.

So Few Makes So Much
Each of its 304,805 letters is composed of several precisely made strokes. A Sofer draws for example, a ‘yod’ (י) as a short vertical stroke; if is lengthened it becomes ‘vav’ (ו) by extending the head, a ‘resh’ (ר) is formed, and if the ‘resh’ has a flat baseline added to it and a short riser it is transformed into a ‘mem’(ם)." All 27 letters are formed with only a few strokes again emphasizing the simplicity of the Torah. There is beauty not in the letters but in the Sofer. The persistence and diligence required both to train and in the actual execution when writing any of the sacred texts is a revelation of the nobility, diligence and beauty within the Sofer. But they must be consistent. The best quality Torahs are those where the lettering is consistent, achieved by practicing the same stroke over and over again.

"Imagine a bar mitzvah boy or girl coming up for the first time to read the Torah and the ‘bet’ (ב) in ‘Bereishit’ (In the beginning, G-d) doesn’t look the same as the ‘bet’ (ב) in. "barah" (create) They’re nice, very artistic, but they’re not consistent."

These letters are written on parchment, not paper or plastic or cloth. Cloth could be made that would mimic parchment so well that no one but G-d and the user, would know the difference. "If it’s not made out of parchment, it’s not a Sefer Torah."

Sifrey Torah Accorded Special Protection
Saddam Hussein attempted to gather all the Sifrey Torah he possibly could and destroy them all. However, one of the officers involved in storing the Torahs slated for destruction realized that a lot of money could be made by selling them to the people who so treasure them.

A sample section of parchment was shown to Rabbi Mordecai Eliyahua, an Iraqi who was a former chief rabbi and one of the leading Torah scholars. He wept upon seeing this scrap of parchment and the ancient lettering inscribed upon it. He knew exactly where it came from and saw the hundreds of years of history it had witnessed.

The Torahs were saved, smuggled to safety within the inner tubes of truck tires. And another chapter was added to their and our history.

However, they wanted a million dollars for each Sefer Torah. "We would not pay more than its worth; we had to avoid creating an incentive for stealing Sifrey Torah. How does one persuade gangsters that the Seforim are not so valuable? Point to some of the gaps and complain that parts are missing.

A million dollars is a lot of money to pay for something made of calf’s skin, wasp nests and honey; some of the basic materials used for making a Torah.

It takes approximately 80 skins to make one Sefer Torah.

Torahs are made of parchment because that’s what the law says they must be made from. Nowadays, the most commonly used parchment for Torahs comes from unborn calves; foetuses from cows slaughtered for food. Torahs in the Middle East were written on parchment that came from goats. Cow skin can not be used for Torahs (though it is used for Tefilin), because it is too thick. However, calves’ skin as well as sheepskin and deerskin have all been used. Deerskin was very popular; in fact it is probably the best skin to use because it’s very difficult to remove the ink. In Europe there are Torahs where the hunter’s bullet hole is still in the Torah.

Goatskin is strongly marked with dark patches for which a white "paint" was developed to cover the parchment. Unfortunately, the paint tends to crack, which in turn cracks the ink and thus invalidates the Torah.

The comfort of the congregation has not been to the advantage of their Sifrey Torah. The heating and cooling being activated and de-activated, causes expansion and contraction which tends to crack the ink. High to moderate humidity promotes the growth of moulds. For this reason it is also advantageous to have the Sifrey Torah “rolled” on a regular basis to give them an opportunity to “breathe”.

Sifrey Torah Are To Be Used Not Stored
The National Museum of Sweden kept a Sefer Torah in its vaults for more than 100 years. However, when the museum permitted the Torah to be authenticated by Rabbi Yitzchak Shteiner, he informed them that what they were protecting so dearly, was not a Torah. Because it had not been used, most of the letters of the Torah had flaked off.

The raw animal skin is put in a large tumbler with a lime solution for up to eight hours to remove all of the hair and degrease it. The skin is then scraped to remove any left over hair or fat, stretched on a frame and allowed to dry slowly. When dry it is called "klaf" and cut into rectangles.

Now the layers of the dried skin are split into the epidermis (outer layer) and the dermis (inner layer). The parchment used for Sifrey Torah, teffilin and mezuzahs comes from the inner side of the epidermis.

Hebrew Letters Hang From The Line
42 horizontal faint lines are impressed into the parchment. There are also two vertical lines to mark the margins between the columns of print. These margins, by tradition, are five fingers wide. Unlike our method of writing on top of the line, soferim hang their writing from the line above. Also, each letter is formed from left to right, though Hebrew is read from right to left.

In the earliest times, bamboo shoots were used as writing tools and are still used by some.
In Europe the preferred tools were goose feathers. There are enough quills in one goose to write an entire Sefer Torah. Duck and chicken feathers are too small, they don’t hold enough ink. One of the first things a sofer learns is how to prepare a quill. A pocket must be created in the quill to hold enough ink to write G-d’s name. It may be written only in outline and filled in afterwards, but the name of G-d must be written with one load of ink. If too large a pocket is made the ink can easily slip out of the quill and make an unholy mess. A slit in the quill promotes even ink flow but most important of all is the penmanship of the sofer. Of course his talent is reflected in the artistic quality of the letter’s shape but it also determines how well the quill behaves. In the hands of a novice the quill is device that makes messes and causes frustrations, in the hands of an accomplished sofer it is a tool of wonderful value.

Ink is made of four ingredients. Gallnut (an excretion produced by some plants when irritated by the larvae of gall wasps. Oak trees are the major commercial source of medicinal gallnuts. The plant secretes the liquid gall, comprised mainly of tannins, that hardens to become the "nut". Gallnut extracts are widely used in pharmaceuticals, food and feed additives, dyes, inks, and metallurgy), which is pulverised and mixed with water.

To that is added gum base from the acacia tree. This is to give elasticity to the dried ink. This is most important because it makes the dried ink elastic which prevents it cracking when the Sefer Torah or mezuzah is rolled. Some recipes did not use sufficient or substituted poor quality elasticisers with very unfortunate results.

According to the law, the ink has to be black like a raven and this is achieved by adding magnesium or copper sulphate crystals. Occasionally in very old Sifrey Toarh the ink has oxidized, a natural reaction through exposure to oxygen in the air, which turns the ink brownish red. In this case it is still Kosher but if after only a short time the colouring changes, the ink is faulty and the sefer is probably not Kosher.

Torah Is Sweet
Honey is sometimes added to thicken the mixture, and on another dimension this symbolises the sweetness of the Torah. Some have a tradition of adding a concoction made from the seven special species which the Holy Land is blessed with: pomegranates, dates, figs, barely, olives, wheat, and grapes.

Ink is usually prepared in small batches to ensure that it is fresh.

There are exactly 248 columns in a Sefer Torah. This is a very special number: it reflects on the human being that has 248 limbs as enumerated in the Mishnah of Ohalos; it reflects on the positive commandments of the Torah and it reflects upon Avraham whose name matches that numerical value. Also, in every Sefer Torah the columns begin and end with the same word.

Sifrey Torah must not be written from memory but copied word for word from another scroll called a Tikkun. Many soferim sing each letter out loud as they write it.

Davidovitch is a famous name amongst the soferim. He wrote a Tikkun to make the columns look more evenly spaced with each column accommodating 62 average letters. Some lines have fewer letters, some have more and both are so marked in his Tikkun. This is very helpful for the sofer who must either make the letters a little wider or narrower to fill the line and make it look comfortably fitted.

There are three different traditions of writing, Ashkenazi, Sephardi and Hasidic. Most of the differences tend to be about the slant or artistic form of the letters.

In 1944, that mad dog of infamy, opened a museum in Prague, which documented the planned soon to be extinct Jewish race. The Czech government invited some rabbis to inspect some of the artefacts that had been collected there. There were many Sifrey Torah, six to seven hundred years old and all written in the Sephardi tradition. It is believed that these Torahs originate from the Jewish expulsion from Spain in 1492.

There are only seven letters with slight variations that separate the Ashkenazi and Sephardic traditions.

For the Sanctity of the Torah Scroll
A sofer is not just a copyist. He attains a state of mind and heart that connects him with his creator and this Torah that is the conduit between HaShem and His Holy People. A Sefer Torah is going to be part of a congregation’s life for the next 300 years.

A sofer requires three basic skills; how to write the letters, the laws governing the formation of the letters (about 4,000) and how to focus ones mind and heart to be truly connected to Gd.

Aside from keeping kosher and strictly observing all the holy days, every morning the sofer should go to the mikvah (ritual bath). When he sits down to write he must actually say "For the sanctity of the Torah Scroll."

Since women are not obligated in the Mitzvah of writing a Sefer Torah they are not permitted to write them. Women’s participation in Jewish rituals is a matter of choice, not an obligation.

Oy, I made a mistake
If a mistake is made when writing the letters in a word, the letters must be removed and rewritten. Sometimes a scalpel is used to chip and scrape the letters off the parchment. This method is more commonly used to restore an old Sefer Torah when the letters are flaking off from age.

However, if a mistake is made in writing G-d’s name which may never be erased, the parchment bearing the name of G-d must be cut out and a patch glued in its place.

According to some traditions, the entire column is removed and replaced.

Sifrey Torah are checked three to seven times for errors. This is done by one person reading aloud each one of the 304,805 letters from an established Tikkun whilst another checks it on the Torah.

After the text is written, the parchment sections have to be sewn together into a roll with thread made from the leg sinews of kosher animals.

The completed Sefer Torah is sewn onto sticks, "Atzei Chayim" (trees/branches of life), in the Sephardic tradition, they are situated inside a beautifully decorated hard case. The Ashkenazi tradition has a soft cover placed over the parchment and sticks.

The Police
Some years ago, the Israeli Police Department and Interpol consulted with various rabbis to develop a method to positively identify Sifrey Torah without marking them and thereby stem the increasing trade in stolen Sifrey Torah. Since Sifrey Torah are hand written, each is slightly different. This allows the police to keep “fingerprints” of all Sifrey Torah on a database. Since these “fingerprints” are unknown to the thief, they are unable to simply replace a known section to change the “fingerprint”.

The final Mitzvah of the Torah is to write a Sefer Torah. Each and every Jew has an obligation to write Sefer Torah.