DRBR 17: In which I am rendered speechless
Regard, if you will, this photograph of a Torah scroll.
All images copyright Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Used with permission.
That’s a Metro card under there. A Metro card is the same size as a credit card. This is a real handwritten originally-kosher sefer Torah, and it’s smaller than a credit card. It’s three inches high.
Here’s another picture:
Speechless? I was. When I took it out of the drawer and opened it I was expecting one of those silly paper scrolls they give to kids, and there was this…Just wow.
I’m guessing the scribe was accustomed to writing very small tefillin, in which the script is about this size, and decided to do a Torah scroll. For a commission? For artistry? Don’t know. The rollers are ivory, and it has a cover crocheted from gold thread. (You may remember this video, of a very tiny scroll with beautiful accessories. The scroll there is five inches high.)
Here’s a close-up of one of the text sections.
What do we know about it? It’s old-the ink is faded, the parchment yellowing. It handles like an eighteenth-century scroll I worked on this summer, although it might not be quite that old. You can tell it’s probably not later than the mid-nineteenth century because the columns start neither בי”ה שמ”ו nor all-vavs, and there is fashion in these things, and probably if you were going to put in the effort to make something like this you’d do it in style, so to speak. It’s written in an Arizal script, which places it in eastern-ish Europe in a Chasidic-influenced community.
The parchment is thinner than printer paper, and in this photograph you can see the altered texture, greyish colour, and squashed-up lettering that denotes an erasure. Take a few moments to marvel, if you will.
Handling this scroll was something special. Don’t mind telling you I was speechless for about five minutes after realising what it was.
Mirrored from hasoferet.com.
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