Hebrew Voices #188 – Writing a Torah Scroll: Part 1

Dr. Nehemia Gordon - Bible Scholar at NehemiasWall.com

In this episode of Hebrew Voices #188, Writing a Torah Scroll: Part 1, Nehemia learns about an ancient Torah scroll from Yemen written by a woman, how modern scribes use archaeology to illustrate the scroll of Esther, and how the history of Egypt helps us understand what the Torah originally looked like when Moses wrote it.

I look forward to reading your comments!

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Hebrew Voices #188 – Writing a Torah Scroll: Part 1

You are listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon's Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

Nehemia: Wait a minute. You’re telling me there’s a Torah scroll written by Miriam of the Benayahu family, a woman scribe, that was used in Yemen, in the National Library of Israel. That’s incredible… Wait, so if there’s no colophon, how do they know she wrote it?

Shalom, and welcome to Hebrew Voices! I’m Nehemia Gordon, and I’m here today with the female scribe, the soferet, Avielah Barclay. Shalom Avielah!

Avielah: Shalom, Nehemia.

Nehemia: So, you actually work as a scribe, which is somewhat unusual to be a woman who’s working as a scribe, but it’s becoming more common these days, isn’t it?

Avielah: It is becoming more common, yeah. We do have records of there being historical soferot, female scribes, that did ritual items like Torah scrolls and Tefillah.

Nehemia: I didn’t know about that. Tell me about that. What I did know about is there were female scribes who wrote regular manuscripts.

Avielah: Yeah.

Nehemia: Like there’s a famous one, I believe she’s from France or something, called Paula Ha’soferet, “Paula the Scribe.”

Avielah: Oh right, yeah.

Nehemia: I did a course at Oxford. And they brought out this manuscript, and it was like a commentary on the Talmud.

Avielah: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nehemia: Some really obscure text.

Avielah: I’ve seen that. Really intense writing. It’s very consistent.

Nehemia: Well, it’s a text that the average male Jew would not understand.

Avielah: No.

Nehemia: Because it’s a very complicated subject matter.

Avielah: Yeah.

Nehemia: And there’s no way you can copy something like that unless you understand it. And her father was a scribe.

Avielah: Yeah.

Nehemia: And he trained her, and she wrote it.

Avielah: Yeah. That’s how a lot of historical soferot became soferot.

Nehemia: And soferim right? Their father trained them.

Avielah: Well yes, exactly. One good example is in Yemen. There was a whole family of scribes, the Benayahu family.

Nehemia: Okay, I know them! Meaning, I know the manuscripts written by the Benayahu family.

Avielah: Exactly. And it was a family that had been scribes for multiple generations.

Nehemia: Right.

Avielah: And there was a daughter named Miriam, and she was also taught to be a soferet just like her brothers were taught to be soferim.

Nehemia: Okay, wow.

Avielah: And she wrote colophons, and she wrote codices. But according to a couple of the book binders, and artists, and scribes, and people that I know in Jerusalem, she has a Torah scroll that’s in the Israel National Library.

Nehemia: Really?

Avielah: Yeah. And she lived in the 1500’s.

Nehemia: Wait a minute. You’re telling me there’s a Torah scroll written by Miriam of the Benayahu family, a woman scribe, that was used in Yemen, in the National Library of Israel. That’s incredible… Wait, so if there’s no colophon, how do they know she wrote it? From the handwriting, or…

Avielah: It was referenced in Even Sapir, which was a book… There was an Ashkenazi rabbi that decided he was going to leave Jerusalem and go collect money all over the world, all over the Jewish world, for the poor of Jerusalem, and he ended up in Yemen. And he wrote this whole book, and it’s a really interesting book. You should read it.

Nehemia: Yeah?

Avielah: It’s in English as well. So, he referenced it there, and there were also multiple… Like I said, I know people who’ve seen it, but I haven’t seen it myself.

Nehemia: So, he’s around at the time of Miriam the scribe. Is that what it is?

Avielah: No, that was later on.

Nehemia: Oh, it was later on. Okay.

Avielah: He was later on. I’m really sorry, off the top of my head I can’t remember the name of the rabbi, but it was…

Nehemia: Okay. Well, this was very common, that there were these emissaries that would go out from Jerusalem…

Avielah: Yes.

Nehemia: And they would collect money on behalf of the Jews of Israel.

Avielah: I think that’s really brave. And also, at the time, you’d literally be walking, you’re traveling around with loads of cash on you. How is that safe? When you consider…

Nehemia: Well, traveling without the cash wasn’t safe.

Avielah: No, it probably wasn’t safe.

Nehemia: Traveling was so unsafe that there’s a traditional Jewish prayer, Tefilat Ha’derech.

Avielah: That’s right.

Nehemia: “The prayer of the traveling.” And I remember when I was a kid, and I was raised Orthodox, and we would recite this when we’d drive down to the Indiana Dunes. And my father would say, “Okay, we’ve got to recite Tefilat Ha’derech,” “The prayer for traveling.” And I’m like, “Armed robbers and bandits? What is this about? Why do we need to do this?” But you know what? There’s a lot of places in the world today that aren’t that safe to travel. And boy, back then, any kind of travel meant you were taking your life in your hands.

Avielah: You really were. You might not come home again.

Nehemia: So, this guy comes from Jerusalem, and he arrives in Yemen, and he finds out there’s a Torah scroll written by Miriam the scribe. I’ve got to hunt this down now and find out what is this Torah scroll…

Avielah: Good! Because if I have got any incorrect information from any of my sources, then obviously that would need to be corrected.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Avielah: This is exciting to me. But she’s not even the first one, because there have been female scribes all over the place. There’s a long list of them, a lot of Italian female scribes, mostly writing Megillot Esther as far as we know, and decorating them of course, because it’s Italy, so you have to decorate things.

Nehemia: And you’re allowed to decorate a Scroll of Esther, but you’re not allowed to decorate a Torah scroll, right?

Avielah: That’s correct, yeah.

Nehemia: Unless you call the Sefer Tagin, that we were talking about, decoration.

Avielah: That’s not the same as decoration. I’m talking about illustration.

Nehemia: Oh, like actual drawings. Yeah.

Avielah: Yeah, drawings or even…

Nehemia: And is that kosher to read from in a synagogue, if it has those drawings?

Avielah: Oh yeah, a lot of Megillot Esther are… it depends on how much money the future owner wants to spend on it, basically.

Nehemia: Okay.

Avielah: But yeah, they’re absolutely kosher to read from. You can yotzei the entire community. The whole community is included. Whoever hears it read will be included in the mitzvah, in the commandments.

Nehemia: Okay.

Avielah: They would have completed their mitzvah.

Nehemia: So, have you done Esther scrolls where they were decorated as well?

Avielah: Yes, I’ve done multiple ones of those. Probably the most elaborate one I’ve ever done… I did one, actually, just a few years ago for Rabba Lindsey Taylor-Guthartz, Dr. Lindsey Taylor-Guthartz, who also went through the Maharat program. So, she’s essentially an Orthodox rabbi as well.

Nehemia: I don’t know what that is.

Avielah: The Maharat program?

Nehemia: What’s that?

Avielah: It’s essentially an Orthodox Rabbinical program for women.

Nehemia: Really?

Avielah: Yeah, it’s out of HIR.

Nehemia: Which is? Hebrew… what is HIR?

Avielah: The Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, Rabbi Avi Weiss, and… there’s all kinds of names that are not coming to me now. And I’m going to say the wrong thing now, and then people write to you and me and say, “That’s not true!” Because I can’t remember!

Nehemia: I get that all the time!

Avielah: Yeah, but I don’t like it. I don’t want to get it! I want to be really responsible about what I’m saying!

Nehemia: I also do hundreds of hours, probably a year, of recordings. And I’ll say, “As it says in Psalm 22,” and someone will write in, “Nehemia, that liar. He’s trying to deceive people! It’s not Psalm 82, it’s Psalms 28!” And I had switched the numbers or something.

Avielah: Yeah, yeah. But they won’t be nice about you just making a mistake.

Nehemia: No.

Avielah: Transposing numbers, right?

Nehemia: No, of course, I did that so that people would be deceived. Because it couldn’t be that I possibly just made a mistake.

Avielah: No, exactly, that’s impossible! Kind of like a scribal error.

Nehemia: Right. Well, it’s interesting. I forget what it was, but there was something where we were exchanging text messages to organize this, and you had a scribal error. I forget what it was, or maybe I did, where we transposed the numbers of the time or something. I don’t remember what it was. And I was like, “Here’s a scribal error!” A modern scribal error in WhatsApp!

Avielah: Exactly.

Nehemia: So, wait, there’s a Rabbinical training program for women?

Avielah: Yeah.

Nehemia: In Orthodox Judaism?

Avielah: Yeah.

Nehemia: Is that accepted by most Orthodox Jews, or…?

Avielah: It’s an ongoing conversation.

Nehemia: Okay. That sounds like a different podcast there!

Avielah: Yes, it does, and better, you should talk to someone who’s actually been through the program. And there are many women in the United States, Britain, Israel, and actually, all over the world, because… I think the first graduate of the program, Rav Sara Hurwitz, was I think about 15 years ago. There’s been quite a few intakes since then.

Nehemia: Oh wow, okay. Alright, so you’ve done scrolls of Esther that are decorated.

Avielah: Yeah.

Nehemia: Because you also do art. Tell us about your art.

Avielah: Yeah, so the most elaborate one I did, actually, I did in between all of the columns, and the beginning and the end, the chelek, the pieces of parchment at the beginning and at the end, I did everything based on the archeological findings in the Louvre and here in the British Museum that they had taken from the Palace at Shushan, The Palace of Susa.

Nehemia: Wow!

Avielah: Because that’s the palace where it…

Nehemia: That’s cool!

Avielah: …was supposed to have happened, the story of Esther.

Nehemia: Right.

Avielah: Shushan Ha’bira, “the city of Susa,” Shushan. So, at the beginning, I have Achashverosh, the king, and I’ve got some attendant boys behind him with the feather fans and everything. And it was all based on actual statues and bas-reliefs, and things like that.

Nehemia: Oh, wow!

Avielah: And the whole thing, in between the columns and all along the top and bottom, are all the tiles. So, I used gouache…

Nehemia: What’s that?

Avielah: …which is a traditional water-based paint that’s basically pigment and binder. And that’s very common to be used in manuscripts, gouache. From hundreds of years ago they were using gouache, and the color stays the same.

Nehemia: Okay.

Avielah: And so, I did that. And I copied all the tile designs that they found in Shushan.

Nehemia: Wow!

Avielah: And I did color matching and everything, so it was in this particular color palette.

Nehemia: Oh, that’s cool!

Avielah: With the kind of technology they had for firing tiles, and glazes, and things like that at the time, so I did that. And then at the end, I had Esther and Mordechai in the garden reclining and having a little libation under the stars and everything.

Nehemia: Wow.

Avielah: And I obviously also did gold leaf. Yeah, it was all very Babylonian and all very period.

Nehemia: That’s pretty cool.

Avielah: It’s actually in Ontario now. A family sponsored that, and now it’s in a synagogue in Ontario.

Nehemia: That’s pretty cool.

Avielah: Yeah, it was fun. It took a long time, though.

Nehemia: How long does it take you to write a Scroll of Esther? And then how long in addition to that to decorate it?

Avielah: Well, it depends on the decorations. The one I wrote for Lindsey Taylor-Guthartz has a different kind of crown at the top of each of the columns, with the exception of the aseret bnei Haman, “the ten sons of Haman” in the story, because they’re all the baddies. Here, I’ll just find, here we go.

Nehemia: It has a special layout.

Avielah: It has a special layout, as you can see there. So, I didn’t put a crown up there, I put it at the top of every other column.

Nehemia: What do you mean a crown?

Avielah: Oh, I literally illustrated a crown.

Nehemia: Like a crown worn on the head?

Avielah: Yes!

Nehemia: Not like crowns like we were talking about in letters, like tagin?

Avielah: Not tagin, it’s more like an aterah, “a crown”. But the crowns were all based, again, on period Achaemenid Persian Empire crowns.

Nehemia: Oh, cool.

Avielah: So, their theme tended to be, like, chrysanthemums and daisies and different kinds of flowers. And particular shapes, like these architectural… And they were worn by kings and queens and princes and different idols and things like that. People who, in Zoroastrian religion, were maybe considered gods and goddesses, or like in the previous pagan religion. So, I used all of those, because that’s the time period that it occurred in.

Nehemia: Right.

Avielah: And I thought putting a European crown there would be a bit like, “Uh…”

Nehemia: That’s interesting. A lot of the scrolls of Esther I’ve seen from… I don’t know if they’re technically from the Middle Ages, because they might be 16th or 17th century. But they’re the Italian ones with all the decorations, and you see these European courtiers. And you’re like, “Wait a minute. That guy could be in a Shakespeare play. That doesn’t look like somebody from the time of Haman and Esther.”

Avielah: Right, but they had no way of knowing though, did they?

Nehemia: Right, right.

Avielah: Because they didn’t have the archeological evidence that we have now.

Nehemia: That’s so cool. So, you’ve taken the fruits of this historical investigation that’s taken place over the last few centuries and put it into a modern Jewish ritual artifact. That’s incredible! That’s really cool!

Avielah: What can I say? I love my research.

Nehemia: That’s very cool!

Avielah: I love my research!

Nehemia: That’s a very cool thing to do. Wow!

Avielah: So, that’s a simpler way of doing it, where you might just put one crown. Because that’s one of the traditional ways of illustrating it, to just put a crown or something like that that’s very simple. Or it can be full color and painted. Parchment is an amazing material. It can take a lot of art supplies, basically!

Nehemia: I saw a Scroll of Esther where every time the word Esther appeared, she had a crown. Meaning the word Esther had a crown on top of it.

Avielah: Nice, yeah.

Nehemia: Which, I’m like, “I didn’t know you’re allowed to do that.”

Avielah: I actually do a special thing with Vashti.

Nehemia: What do you do with Vashti?

Avielah: Well, there’s all kinds of different ways that, according to Sefer Tagin, you could write… There’s different kinds of crowns that you could write.

Nehemia: On Vashti.

Avielah: Onto the different letters of Vashti, different variations. Because I think Vashti gets demonized and bullied, but she knows who she is, and she stands up for herself. And I think she’s sometimes forgotten. In a lot of traditions, she’s sort of… “Hmm, Vashti. We didn’t like her anyway, so it doesn’t matter,” kind of thing. But I think she sets a very good example by saying, “No, I’m not going to be humiliated. I’m not going to have someone cross my boundaries like that.” So, I think she deserves to be recognized and decorated and admired for that as well. Just because she doesn’t end up being the heroine of the story…

Nehemia: Right.

Avielah: …and she’s not the savior of the Jewish people the way Esther is, she’s still done the right thing though, Vashti.

Nehemia: But even on the peshat level, the “plain level,” she’s not a bad character.

Avielah: No, not at all.

Nehemia: In other words, I think there’s this thought that making Vashti into a heroine is revisionism.

Avielah: Oh yeah, I don’t think she’s a heroine. I think she just stood up for herself and said no because it was an unreasonable request. It was humiliating.

Nehemia: Well, the question is, what exactly was the request? Meaning, tell… what was the request that was unreasonable?

Avielah: I feel much more comfortable when I can quote things, because if I paraphrase in this case, it could come out really wrong.

Nehemia: Okay, so, one interpretation of the story… Achashverosh, or Ahasuerus, or however it’s pronounced in English.

Avielah: I don’t bother pronouncing it in English.

Nehemia: Achashverosh is…

Avielah: Xerxes.

Nehemia: …he demands that she appear before him during his drunken stupor party, and one interpretation of that is he demands that she appear before all of his friends naked. And that certainly is an unreasonable request.

Avielah: It is.

Nehemia: And in that case…

Avielah: It doesn’t say “naked” in the scroll.

Nehemia: No, it doesn’t. I’m saying that’s one interpretation.

Avielah: Yes.

Nehemia: Meaning… the question is, just show up. What’s the problem? Your husband asked you to show up and show your beauty to his friends…

Avielah: Because they’re having a little locker room talk.

Nehemia: Okay, that’s not in the scroll either, right?

Avielah: No. But why show off what your wife looks like to a giant room full of drunken men? Is that really a good situation to put your wife into?

Nehemia: Yeah, that probably isn’t going to end well.

Avielah: Is that a room any woman wants to walk into?

Nehemia: Right, right.

Avielah: It doesn’t matter whether it’s nowadays or back then.

Nehemia: And there was definitely a theme in the scroll of Esther where this is one big drunken stupor. It’s such a big drunken stupor, he’s like, “I’m not even going to rule this kingdom. Who’s the highest bidder? I’ll just give him my signet ring.”

Avielah: Right.

Nehemia: And then he gives it to Haman.

Avielah: Yeah. Boo!

Nehemia: How would history have turned out differently if, in so many different periods, if alcohol wasn’t involved?

Avielah: It’s very funny how there’s so much drinking on almost every page.

Nehemia: It’s a central theme there.

Avielah: Yeah. And it goes on for a long period of time, actually. It’s not just a weekend. The story doesn’t take place over a week or two, it takes place over many months.

Nehemia: It’s an extended period.

Avielah: Yeah. Over a year.

Nehemia: And even at the plain level of the text, he sobers up the next day, and he’s like, “Oh, what did I do?”

Avielah: Yeah.

Nehemia: “I banished her.” Or in one interpretation, he executed her. But it doesn’t say that.

Avielah: It doesn’t say that either.

Nehemia: He just deposed her.

Avielah: Yeah.

Nehemia: And he sobered up and he’s like, “Oh, now what do I do?”

Avielah: Oops.

Nehemia: Yeah, exactly, so… it’s interesting. You were talking about female scribes, and you said there are other examples from history.

Avielah: Right, yeah. And also, there was a prince in Tawuk or Dakuk.

Nehemia: Where’s that?

Avielah: It’s in Persia. And he was always referred to as ben ha’soferet.

Nehemia: The “son of the female scribe”.

Avielah: Right.

Nehemia: Okay.

Avielah: So, nothing about his dad. They weren’t saying anything about his dad, they were just referring to that.

Nehemia: Okay, wow.

Avielah: And there was Rebbetzin Dulcea of Worms…

Nehemia: Tell me about that.

Avielah: …who was the wife of the rokeach, of Rav Eleazer of Worms.

Nehemia: Wow! The early 13th century.

Avielah: During Crusader times, because unfortunately she and two of her daughters were murdered by Crusaders. She used to sew the iriyot of the Sifrei Torah together.

Nehemia: The sheets, she would sew them together.

Avielah: The sheets together, she would sew them together, yeah.

Nehemia: That’s interesting.

Avielah: I don’t know if she did anything else, but that’s just an example of places… there’s many different places where it’ll say, “And don’t let a woman write this,” or, “Don’t let a woman sew that. And if she has, maybe unpick it and resew it.” And then another opinion will say, “Maybe not.” It’ll say something else.

Nehemia: So, this is really interesting. She sewed together the sheets of the Torah scroll. So, you know what it implies? That she was literate. Because how would you know which sheet to sew to which other sheet unless you read what it said?

Avielah: I suppose… in theory I suppose her husband could have said, “Can you sew this one to that one?” You could make that argument.

Nehemia: Yeah, it’s possible, but…

Avielah: But when you consider what a big rabbi he was, and the fact that his rulings influenced basically all of Ashkenazi Jewry, even until today, he’s a very important rabbi. And his wife was doing that.

Nehemia: He’s one of the key figures of medieval mysticism. He wrote a series of books, one of the more famous ones is Sodei Razaya, and that’s actually a collection of a bunch of works. It’s basically “The Secrets of the Mysteries”, or something like that, is the translation.

Yeah, so he is one of the key authors of medieval mysticism and all kinds of other works. And yeah, that’s interesting. I didn’t know. So, his wife sewed Torah scrolls together, the pieces of the scrolls. One of the things about the Torah scrolls is, there are catch words. So, in a codex, you’ll have a quire, which is basically a little notebook.

Avielah: Yeah.

Nehemia: And there will be the first word of the next quire. So, all you have to do is be able to read that word, not all of the context, to figure out what goes with what. Whereas in Torah scrolls, with the exception of the Bologna scroll, we don’t have catch words. And so, if you want to know which goes to which, you’ll have to like, “Read this verse… oh yeah, this lines up here.”

Avielah: And you’ve got your tikkun, obviously, to show you what goes with what.

Nehemia: Right. So, she could have been checking a tikkun. I suppose that’s possible.

Avielah: It’s possible.

Nehemia: Or other Torah scrolls.

Avielah: That was pre-printing press obviously, so it’s more likely back then that people were copying from other Torah scrolls.

Nehemia: No, no, but they had tikkuns. We have a tikkun from…

Avielah: Yeah, but they would have had to be handwritten.

Nehemia: For sure.

Avielah: Yeah.

Nehemia: We have a tikkun from, I believe it’s in Hamburg. And it is the exact layout of several Torah scrolls that we have that are today in Berlin.

Avielah: Yeah?

Nehemia: And it’s almost certain that either they were copies… well, it is certain, that they were either copied from that tikkun or they were both copied from a common source. That’s always the question.

Avielah: Right, yeah.

Nehemia: Whenever you have A and B, was A copied from B? Was B copied from A? Or were they both copied from C? That’s always the question. But there’s no question that this tikkun matches at least two Torah scrolls in the layout, meaning how each column begins.

Avielah: That’s really interesting. I did not know that. But then, that’s your field not mine.

Nehemia: So, we have tikkunei soferim that are handwritten.

Avielah: That’s one of the advantages of a codex, and that is one of the ways that it can be an improvement in technology.

Nehemia: How so?

Avielah: Well, it depends on what you’re using the words for. It depends on whether you’re traveling with it. It depends on whether you’re holding it in your hands when you’re reading it, or whether you’re putting it on the table to read it. It depends on whether it’s public or private.

The Torah scroll we have now, which is the five Books of Moses, used to be five separate books of Moses. And it used to be more democratized, in that people used to be able to potentially afford it, or write their own if they were literate enough, because they were smaller. And then it was only later on in Jewish history that the rabbis decided, “Oh no. We’re going to sew them all together and we’re going to have them in the synagogue, and then everyone will have to come there to hear it.” And it’s so big that your average person can’t afford it, and it’s so big that you generally can’t travel with it, again, because it’s handmade. You can make them quite small. There’s many small ones out there that literally the writing is like a Mezuzah; tiny, tiny, tiny.

Nehemia: I’ve seen ones where the writing’s much smaller than that.

Avielah: Smaller than that. Yeah, so have I. They are unusual but yes, they’re very easy to do hagbah.

Nehemia: Yeah! Well, that’s interesting. Hagbah is where you lift up the scroll in the synagogue.

Avielah: That’s right, and you show it to everyone. “This is the Torah.”

Nehemia: So, there’s a scroll in Berlin which I’ve been told… I haven’t lifted it up myself. I’ve seen it but I didn’t weigh it. I’m told it weighs 60 kilos, which is about 120 pounds. So, how on earth… it couldn’t have been one person, it had to have been at least two people, I would think, to lift that up.

Avielah: It’s kind of dangerous, though!

Nehemia: Yeah, you would think it would rip, because…

Avielah: Well, it depends on how much tension you put it under and how it’s sewn together…

Nehemia: You have to be really careful.

Avielah: Really careful.

Nehemia: Yeah. And Marc mentioned in the program we did together, a series of programs, that a lot of the scrolls he’s repaired are when someone did hagbah, and it ripped!

Avielah: Yeah, either a hagbah accident, or sometimes some synagogues for Simchat Torah will unroll… They’ll either be a Simchat Torah accident, potentially, where we take them all out and we do hakafot, we dance around the synagogue with them.

Nehemia: Right.

Avielah: And you can sometimes have an accident then, if you’re not careful. And also, sometimes some synagogues like to unroll the entire Sefer Torah all around the entire inside of the synagogue and have everyone hold onto it at the top and see the whole thing.

Nehemia: We have to talk about this. There was an incident…

Avielah: Of course there was!

Nehemia: It must have been about 10 years ago, where there was this Christian pastor who had had some kind of a scandal… I don’t even know the details. I was going to say I don’t remember the details…

Avielah: Let’s not gossip!

Nehemia: No, no, no, but here’s the part that’s important.

Avielah: Yeah?

Nehemia: When he came back out of exile, let’s call it that, he brought in a Messianic Jewish rabbi who took out a Torah scroll, unrolled it, and wrapped this Christian pastor in the Torah scroll. And this became an international scandal because they were touching the Torah scroll with their hands. You had people who were holding it, and it was this international scandal. It’s cultural appropriation, which I don’t entirely disagree with. It’s desecrating the Torah scroll, which I don’t entirely disagree with. But it’s something that Jews don’t do. And Jews do do that, that was just a lie.

Avielah: No. Jews don’t wrap another human being in the Torah scroll, though.

Nehemia: No, no, they don’t. But they do unravel an entire Torah scroll and they have people hold onto it and they have them touch it with their bare hands.

Avielah: They’re not supposed to do that.

Nehemia: But you just described how they’re holding it, right?

Avielah: So, this is only something that started happening with the baby boomer generation, with the Jewish Catalog generation and the Pnei Or Movement.

Nehemia: What’s the Jewish Catalog generation? I don’t know what that is.

Avielah: Oh, there’s the first, second, and third Jewish Catalog.

Nehemia: Never heard of it.

Avielah: They first started writing them, I believe, in 1968, 1970, something like that. It was basically Jews who are of the baby boomer generation who felt dissatisfied with… and they didn’t feel that they connected well with their parents’ Judaism.

Nehemia: Okay.

Avielah: And that’s fair. Every generation makes decisions like that for itself, right?

Nehemia: Yeah, sure.

Avielah: I’m a gen X’er. We did things differently too!

Nehemia: Okay.

Avielah: And now we have more generations who do things differently.

Nehemia: Okay.

Avielah: That’s just how it goes.

Nehemia: So, what was the catalog? I’m not familiar with that.

Avielah: The catalogs… well, they collected lots of different things and they illustrated it themselves and they wrote in it. There’s a bit on scribal arts in the first Jewish Catalog. There’s a bit on different creative ways of making different Jewish rituals meaningful, because a lot of people, if they had a very American identity and maybe they had become divorced from their tribal Jewish heritage and their religious affiliation and everything, then they didn’t necessarily find it meaningful. Because all that was left was the ritual and because the meaning hadn’t been passed down to everybody it was sort of hollow for them. So, they were trying to reclaim it.

As you know, a lot of people of that generation changed religion. And that’s the first generation, really, where it was becoming not unheard of for people to change religions, to convert to different religions. Now it’s very common. Yeah, so they wanted to reconnect with their Judaism. So, they did this, and it was amazing. So many people have benefited from the Jewish Catalogs. So many of them.

Nehemia: I have to learn more about this. I’ve literally never heard of it.

Avielah: They’re so good.

Nehemia: Are they books? What are they?

Avielah: Yeah, yeah, they’re books. They’re like this big, and when you see them, you’ll be like, “Oh yeah. That’s very late 60’s or early 70’s.”

Nehemia: It’s a catalog of what? Of practices?

Avielah: Just loads of things.

Nehemia: It’s not like the Sears catalogs. What is it?

Avielah: Every single catalog there will be like, “Let’s learn about this stuff and put that in.” And then everyone was like, “This is amazing! Let’s learn about more stuff and put that in!” And that’s why there’s three of them with an index and everything.

Nehemia: Okay.

Avielah: And they helped that generation, and subsequent generations, actually, because Jews reconnected with their Judaism and understand it better. And then it inspired so many people to learn more and reconnect. And if this was the beginning, the seeding of their reconnection, then they could find their own way.

Nehemia: Okay. And they described this unraveling of the Torah scroll?

Avielah: No. Not that I recall. I mean, there’s three catalogs. I can’t remember everything that’s in it.

Nehemia: Okay, but was your point…

Avielah: My point is that that is something that didn’t used to happen.

Nehemia: Well, I agree. It didn’t happen 100 years ago.

Avielah: And then if I’m not mistaken, it started happening with either the rabbis or the followers of the rabbis associated with Pnei Or and the Jewish Renewal movement, like Rebbe Solomon Schechter-Shalomi, who was a lovely man by the way. May he rest in peace. He was also a sofer.

Nehemia: Oh, really?

Avielah: Yeah, he gave me advice, actually, about spacing, which I appreciate.

Nehemia: Spacing words?

Avielah: Well, he said, and not every sofer or soferet will agree with this, but he said that when you write a pasuk, a sentence, he said there are rules about how much space you put in between words and how much space you put in between letters. But he said, “But at the end of a pasuk, at the end of a sentence, just add a little tiny bit more space. Don’t put the exact amount of space that you would between words, because that way when the person is reading it, their brain will register the very slight wider space. Don’t make it two spaces because that’s not allowed! Just like one-and-a-half, one-and-a- quarter spaces, because the eye and the brain will still see that. And then it’ll be easier for them to go, ‘Ah, that’s the end.’ And if they’re chanting it then it just makes it easier for them to read and to serve the community.”

Nehemia: So, do you know? That’s one of the characteristics of medieval Ashkenazi Torah scrolls.

Avielah: I have seen those; they actually have quite big spaces sometimes.

Nehemia: Very big spaces.

Avielah: Yeah, definitely two or more spaces!

Nehemia: There’s no question… Well, they want to make sure it’s not a Parashah Setumah, a closed Parashah.

Avielah: Yeah, but you have to have quite a few letters for that.

Nehemia: Right. But there’s a distinctive space… and by the way, they did it in mezuzahs as well.

Avielah: Yeah.

Nehemia: And it was done up until the 19th century, and possibly even the 20th century. It’s not just in the Middle Ages.

Avielah: No. I was going to say, I’ve seen one from 1790 that definitely had really wide spaces, that was from Germany.

Nehemia: And I’ve seen it in 13th century Torah scrolls.

Avielah: Really? I’m not surprised.

Nehemia: It’s a distinctive Ashkenazi practice to put spaces between verses.

Avielah: Right.

Nehemia: In Italian Torah scrolls they actually put a dot between verses, which is definitely forbidden in Masechet Soferim, and then somebody would often come along and erase all the dots.

Avielah: Right.

Nehemia: And you’ll see these Torah scrolls where there’s a scratch-off after every verse.

Avielah: Wow!

Nehemia: And sometimes they missed it, and you can still see… but it’s obviously a scratch-off in the shape of a dot.

Avielah: Originally, the Egyptians used to put a dot in between all the words because that’s before we invented spaces.

Nehemia: In Paleo-Hebrew they did that, for sure.

Avielah: Exactly. That was where I was going with that. We used to put a dot in between every single word because nobody… So, there’s this Midrash, there’s this idea that when Moses wrote the Torah and God was dictating the Torah to Moses, that he just wrote it as one long utterance, one long sentence.

Nehemia: With no spaces between the words.

Avielah: And there were no spaces, that’s right. And so, you think, “This sounds a bit mystical and some kind of mythological thing.” And the story goes on… but really, then, if you understand the history of writing, you go, “Oh, but there wouldn’t have been any spaces actually, because we didn’t invent spaces first.”

Nehemia: No, but there were dot dividers between the words.

Avielah: There were dot dividers, but that didn’t take up a whole space.

Nehemia: And sometimes you had two words that were together, and so it would be like, “et ha’aretz”, and that’s not an actual example, but if you look, for example, in the Siloam Inscription or the Lachish letters, it’s very common that when you have a small word, that word is attached to the following word. And we have represented in the Masoretic text with the makaf, with the hyphen, where essentially two words for the purposes of the accents, of the trope. The ta’amim are treated as one word, and that may reflect these dots that were word dividers. By the way, the Samaritans still do that. They divide the words with dots.

Avielah: Yeah! I’ve seen that, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nehemia: But you have that in the Lachish letters, the Arad Letters, you have that in the Siloam Inscription…

Avielah: It was normal.

Nehemia: You have it in the Mesha, which isn’t Hebrew, it’s Moabite. But it’s basically the same thing.

Avielah: Yeah, yeah.

Nehemia: So, I want to go back to this unrolling of the Torah scroll.

Avielah: Right. So, that is a beautiful way for people to connect with the Torah scroll. And it means a lot to them, and their hearts are very full. And that is an important thing. Whatever religion or group you’re going to be a part of your heart has to be in it. You have to have a sense of belonging. And there are many ways of doing that. But when you think about the laws and the Halakhot, they’re not just there to keep things separate, or apart, or mysterious. That being said, sometimes it’s appropriate for things to be separate, and apart, and mysterious, because that’s a part of how it has its value. People don’t understand how to treat parchment. They don’t know that even if your hands are clean, if you touch that, then in 50 years your fingerprints are going to show up on it, and it will cause damage because there’s always acids in your fingers. That’s why you always have to work with paper down and sleeves. You have to be very careful, and some scribes work with gloves on.

Nehemia: That’s very controversial today.

Avielah: Because of the change in the haptic feedback, yeah.

Nehemia: So, basically the belief in most libraries that I have gone to with medieval manuscripts is that, if you have gloves on, you’re going to cause more damage than if you don’t.

Avielah: Yeah.

Nehemia: Because you don’t have the dexterity to turn the pages, and then Torah scrolls aren’t pages. But still, I can think of two, maybe three, libraries that I’ve ever been to that asked me to put on gloves, and every other place said, “No, you’re not allowed to put on gloves.”

Avielah: You’re not allowed to. Because, like you say, you don’t have that haptic feedback, you can’t feel the pages the same way. Very early on I was writing a Torah scroll, and the place that I was writing wasn’t heated because someone was offering attic space for me to work in. So, I wore gloves. But then, of course, I couldn’t feel the quill properly, really. So, then I ended up using gloves that had no fingers, it was like the fingertips were not there. And then I realized that they’re a little bit too fuzzy, because the tiny bit of fuzz, that was really microscopic, was dragging through the fresh ink because I’m right-handed.

Nehemia: Oh, no!

Avielah: So, I was like, “Okay, I can’t use these either.” Luckily God’s name was not involved.

Nehemia: Okay, wow. You were going to demonstrate some things for us.

Avielah: Right, okay.

Nehemia: Is that your keset ha’sofer?

Avielah: Yeah, sort of. Well, it is really, but yeah. I’ve actually got one…

Nehemia: Because keset could also mean “a bag”.

Avielah: I’ve got one. I’ve got a brass…

Nehemia: Oh, nice.

Avielah: Yeah, it’s amazing.

Nehemia: So, what are we doing here?

Avielah: Well, I thought I would just try to write some letters, if that’s alright with you?

Nehemia: Oh, that’s great.

Avielah: Is that alright?

Nehemia: Yeah.

Avielah: I didn’t cut this very well, actually. It’s not behaving well.

Nehemia: And this is a goose feather?

Avielah: Yeah, this is goose. It’s not turkey… I actually prefer turkey.

Nehemia: I heard that turkey is the best…

Avielah: Oh yeah, this is not the standard recording. I’m making very bad letters with this.

Nehemia: So, I heard turkey is the best quill.

Avielah: Okay, no, you’re not keeping that. Here, I’ve got some here. I prefer turkey because the feather is really thick, and the thing is that… I should have brought a bigger one as well. The thing is, you see all these surgical scars?

Nehemia: Yeah.

Avielah: So, my hand got crushed.

Nehemia: Oh, no!

Avielah: No, it’s part of my seferot journey. It’s fine, it turns out. So, that’s why I used to be a gemologist, and then I stopped being a gemologist, because I couldn’t handle tweezers anymore because my hand was crushed in a car accident.

Nehemia: Oh, no.

Avielah: And I had to have my hand put back together.

Nehemia: Wow, well that’s good.

Avielah: So, now she’s faster, stronger and better, we have the technology!

Nehemia: The Bionic Woman.

Avielah: Right, exactly.

Nehemia: Can you tell us what all these tools are?

Avielah: Well, yeah, these are just different kinds of kulmuses, these are just different…

Nehemia: That’s not a kulmus, is it?

Avielah: It is. This is one that’s usually… I forget the name of this.

Nehemia: Is this metal?

Avielah: No, it’s not. This is a particular kind of wood; I think it’s ebony or something. I got this from an Arabic calligrapher supply store. Because you get different… I’m going to use this one.

Nehemia: Now, would you be allowed to write a Torah scroll with this?

Avielah: Yeah, you absolutely can, because it’s wood.

Nehemia: Okay. Just not metal?

Avielah: Well, there are a lot of scribes today that will use metal pens that are basically like fountain pens.

Nehemia: Okay.

Avielah: So they don’t have to dip as much, and so they can write faster, so that they can get the Torah scrolls written faster.

Nehemia: So, they are allowed to do that?

Avielah: Only one authority, which was Ganzfried, said that was okay. No one else says it’s okay.

Nehemia: Are there Orthodox scribes who do that?

Avielah: Yeah.

Nehemia: Really?

Avielah: And I shouldn’t have that disparaging tone in my voice, because I shouldn’t really judge them.

Nehemia: Okay.

Avielah: But to me… I mean, it’s a completely different thing. That’s why they have to go through and put all the tagin on later on with basically a little art pen, like a felt pen kind of thing, because you can’t make tagin with these pens, these metal pens that are basically for fancy writing.

Nehemia: Because they’re not fine enough, is that why?

Avielah: They’re not fine enough, but also you don’t get the same snap. You don’t get the same flexibility. You can’t make it as thin, and you don’t get the same snap to it. You can’t use the spitz to make a proper letter.

Nehemia: Okay.

Avielah: But economically, I don’t judge them at all, because… See? This is so much better. Look at that!

Nehemia: So, while you’re doing this, talk about…

Avielah: I still made the nose too short though. It’s still an unacceptable letter.

Nehemia: Tell us why a robot can’t do this.

Avielah: A robot has no kavanah.

Nehemia: So, as you’re writing for a Torah scroll…

Avielah: That’s also not going on!

Nehemia: …you have to have some level of intent which a robot can’t form.

Avielah: Yes, you have to have intention about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. And you have to have in mind that it’s a mitzvah, even though it’s considered, depending on the list, the 613th mitzvah, to write a sacred Torah. You don’t make a blessing over a Torah scroll before you start writing it, but you do… This is another argument as to why women should be able to do it, because it’s not really time bound, is it? And also, women are potential teachers of Torah, and that is actually what a Torah scroll is for, it’s to teach Torah.

Nehemia: Oh, okay.

Avielah: But again, it depends on which authority that you’re going to listen to.

Nehemia: Okay.

Avielah: So, I’ll try again.

Nehemia: There’s a type of inscription we see in medieval manuscripts, in codices, where somebody comes along and writes…

Avielah: There we go, that’s better!

Nehemia: “Nisiti ha’kulmus.”

Avielah: Nisiti?

Nehemia: “I tried the pen,” “I tried the pen,” “I tried the pen,” and they’ll write it over and over. And it’s usually in the flyleaf on the back page…

Avielah: Oh!

Nehemia: Uh oh.

Avielah: Okay…

Nehemia: I guess that’s the problem with wood!

Avielah: Umm… it can be, yes. I didn’t think I was being that tough on it! I was just being intense, like I am.

Nehemia: Ooh.

Avielah: Okay, well, I’ve got one left. It’s fine.

Nehemia: And tell us what the plastic one is.

Avielah: Well, the plastic one I really just got to experiment myself with art. As you can see, it’s been stained red. I’ve never used this for soferut. In fact, I’ve never used any of these for soferut because I was trained on a feather. And I may be biased, but that’s one of the reasons why Ashkenazi lettering looks different from Sephardi, and Mizrahi, and all the other lettering… Yemenite lettering… because the tools are different. And so, each tool lends itself to different letter shapes.

Nehemia: Okay.

Avielah: And different angles and things like that. So, I have collected these because I am an aficionado, and I also care very much about different scribal practices. And I also actually loan these out to people when I go and teach, and it’s like, “Do you want to try these? Do you want to try feathers?” And then they can see how hard it is, actually. So, this I’ve only ever used…

Nehemia: What would you even do with that?

Avielah: This? You dip it in ink or paint or whatever, and you can still use it as a stylus. You can use it basically as a brush, or you can do large letters. But I would only do this if it was big calligraphy, as it were.

Nehemia: I see.

Avielah: I would never use this on a… Because one of the things that is a concern if you use metal, or like, this is basically acrylic, this plastic, is that it will imprint. And that is actually another one of the rules; that you’re not allowed to stamp in or imprint in any of the letters. They have to be written.

Sorry it took me three Alephs just to make a good Aleph. But I changed the styluses. I cut this earlier, but the slit down the center is off-center. One of my mentors, who will obviously remain nameless, because he confided in me and Marc, he was like, “I’m not very good at cutting quills.” And it’s like, “Oh, wow, okay, that sucks!” So, he said he has to work really, really hard and cut them many, many, many times until he finally gets a good one. So, he spends a large proportion of his time actually making the tool correct so that he can actually make the right letters.

Nehemia: What do you do with the razor? Is that to erase letters and also to cut the quill?

Avielah: This?

Nehemia: No, I meant this thing.

Avielah: Oh, this? This is literally like a quill knife.

Nehemia: Okay, that’s to cut a quill.

Avielah: Yeah, you can use it to cut a quill. It’s got a blade here and it’s got a blade here. This is actually really more of a European tool, because… I don’t know what you grew up calling those little flip knives, like a pocketknife.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Avielah: Did you grow up calling it a pen knife?

Nehemia: I’ve heard that term, yeah.

Avielah: Okay, well that’s why.

Nehemia: Oh!

Avielah: Because all small knives, especially ones that folded and went in your pocket, that was so that you could cut your pen.

Nehemia: They were used to cut pens! I didn’t know that! That’s so cool.

Avielah: And everyone who was literate knew how to make a pen.

Nehemia: Wow!

Avielah: Because you would make it out of a feather, usually.

Nehemia: You’d grab a feather, and you’d make it. Wow!

Avielah: Yeah.

Nehemia: I didn’t know that.

Avielah: That’s why it’s called a pen knife.

Nehemia: That’s really cool.

Avielah: Yeah.

Nehemia: That’s fascinating. I did not know that.

Avielah: Yeah, and you can actually get them… you can get Victorian ones and even older ones on auctions sites or ebay, or whatever. And sometimes they’re sterling silver, sometimes they’re wood, it depends on how wealthy… And they have different sized knives and sometimes they have a little tool to pull out. It’s kind of like a corkscrew tool to pull out all of the stuff that’s inside the feather. I can’t remember what it’s called. There’s lots of compartments in there that you have to pull out when you’re cutting it, so the ink doesn’t end up getting caught in any of them and blobbing out later on.

Nehemia: Ooh.

Avielah: Yeah. So, it’ll have two different sized knives… But this I use to make the slit down the center.

Nehemia: Okay.

Avielah: And you can only use it once. You can only use one spot once.

Nehemia: Did you make this ink? Or you bought this ink? How does it work?

Avielah: This is ink that I bought, actually, yeah.

Nehemia: Do you ever make ink?

Avielah: I do. I forage for it.

Nehemia: Seriously?

Avielah: Yeah.

Nehemia: Tell me what…

Avielah: I go foraging on my own sometimes, but I also go foraging with my good friend and neighbor, Joumana Medlej, who is a Lebanese calligrapher who does Arabic calligraphy. She’s an artist.

Nehemia: What do you forage for?

Avielah: We forage for things like gall nuts.

Nehemia: You find gall nuts here in England?

Avielah: I have got a pile… I should have brought some.

Nehemia: I would love that.

Avielah: I knew I’d forgotten something! Yeah, I have loads of different gall nuts.

Nehemia: Really?

Avielah: I’ve actually got some… So, a bookbinder friend of mine, Yehudah Miklaf, you’d love him. Oh my God, he tells the best stories.

Nehemia: Okay.

Avielah: He used to be a monk.

Nehemia: He used to be what?

Avielah: He used to be a monk, and now he’s an Orthodox Jew in Jerusalem with grandchildren.

Nehemia: Oh, wow! Okay.

Avielah: Yeah, and he’s a bookbinder.

Nehemia: Okay.

Avielah: And he made books for the Pope, and the Queen, and everything. And he tells the best stories because he’s had an amazing life.

Nehemia: You have to email me his contact number.

Avielah: Yeah, I will do. Like I said, he tells the best stories. And it’s very funny, because last year, we discovered that we are distantly related!

Nehemia: Wow.

Avielah: Which is awesome!

Nehemia: It’s a small world.

Avielah: Because it’s 500-years-ago related, something like that.

Nehemia: One of those, okay.

Avielah: So, why was I telling you about him? Oh, right. So, I go foraging with Joumana, and we find gall nuts… He gave me a suitcase full of gall nuts that had been smuggled out of Persia at one point.

Nehemia: What?

Avielah: Into Israel. And he was like, “I’ve got loads of these. Here, have some.” So, then I brought them back to Canada. This was a long time ago; I’m sure the statute of limitations has run out. I don’t even know if it was okay for me to do that or not, I just wanted to have gall nuts! But yeah, you can get them here. They’re mostly on oak. Sometimes you can find them on sumac, but they’re pretty much always on oak. And there are different variety of gall nuts, because the Middle Eastern gall nuts are a different size and texture.

Nehemia: It’s on the Atlantic oak, isn’t it, in the Middle East? Or the Aleppo oak, or something like that.

Avielah: I wasn’t going to say Atlantic oak. I don’t know.

Nehemia: No, no, it’s the Atlantic.

Avielah: Atlantic?

Nehemia: So, the oak trees in Israel are very unusual because they come from the Atlantic region, and there was some kind of thing where they were very common, widespread all over the region, and then there was a climatic change…

Avielah: Okay.

Nehemia: …where the climate somehow shifted, and they were trapped there. So, there’s this small region… Like, you’ll have these Atlantic oaks that have no business in the Eastern Mediterranean, they’re just left over from some kind of earlier climate.

Avielah: Huh! That’s very interesting.

Nehemia: And they look unusual within the environment.

Avielah: I’m sure they do.

Nehemia: There aren’t other trees like that around there…

Avielah: Because if they look like they’re North American… there’s different varieties of varieties of Northern American oak as well.

Nehemia: No, they don’t look North American.

Avielah: They look English?

Nehemia: They look like something you would find on the western coast of Spain.

Avielah: Oh, okay, like that.

Nehemia: Something like that, I don’t know exactly. But yeah, it’s kind of this islet that got left when there was a shift in the climate.

Avielah: Right. I did not know that. That’s really interesting.

Nehemia: Yeah. And so, the oak tree is… and they have these gall nuts. It’s interesting…

Avielah: On my Instagram, I show you pictures of where I bray, and then where I actually…

Nehemia: Bray?

Avielah: Yeah, so, braying something is to crush it into bigger pieces, not to crush it into powder. So, I’ve got different sizes. I’ve actually got one that’s this massive brass one that has got Jerusalem written on it in Amharic. I’m like, “What? How did that happen? Weird.”

Nehemia: Wow. That is weird.

Avielah: So, I use the gall nuts. And the other thing I use is, we grow grapes at our home, and so, when I prune the grapes every year, I keep the grapewood, and then I…

Nehemia: What’s the grapewood? The seeds?

Avielah: No, just the branches.

Nehemia: The vine?

Avielah: Yeah, the vine. Because every year you’re supposed to cut them back. And so, I do that, then I dry them, and then you can put them… it’s like the fire equivalent of a double boiler. You put them in a small can and a big can, and then you turn them into charcoal. You put them in a fire. They can’t burn, you want to turn them into charcoal, and that’s where you get your soot from.

Nehemia: Really?

Avielah: Instead of burning olive oil, which is another way…

Nehemia: Really?

Avielah: Yeah. So, you get that. So, literally vine black, the paint, is from grapevines. And then you would add pigment to that, and that is vine black.

Nehemia: Wait, so, that big piece of charcoal, all of that can be used to make carbon ink?

Avielah: Well, if you buy it in an art store, then it’s usually made from willow.

Nehemia: No, I’m saying what you do.

Avielah: Oh yeah. What I do…

Nehemia: Because one of the things I’ve heard is…

Avielah: It’s usually smaller sticks of it that I prune back… So, I have the charcoal, and I can bray that, and then I’ve got the gall nuts, so I can bray that and make that into a tea and boil it down. And then I’ve got gum arabic…

Nehemia: So, what you’re making, first of all, is a mixed ink, meaning it has carbon and… we didn’t hear about iron sulfate, so it’s a carbon ink. Are you putting some kind of iron source into it?

Avielah: Yeah, sometimes. It depends, it depends on what I use it for. I don’t remember if I said this earlier, but I always give… yeah, I think I did, I always give my clients the choice. I say, “Well, I make this ink,” and then I tell them about it, “and I also buy…” And the ink that I tend to like to use is Rav Nahari ink, which is a Yemenite recipe.

Nehemia: Do you know what’s in it?

Avielah: Well, they’re proprietary.

Nehemia: Do you know if there’s carbon in it?

Avielah: But I can make some guesses, just because I know it certainly smells like vinegar. So, it’s probably like wine vinegar, grape vinegar.

Nehemia: Do you know the Yemenite Midrash about the dogs?

Avielah: The dogs?

Nehemia: Yeah.

Avielah: No.

Nehemia: So, when the Israelites left Egypt, the dogs didn’t bark. And there is a Midrash that says that the dogs were rewarded to participate in the writing of a Torah scroll because they didn’t bark. And what does that mean? They dye their skins; not of the dogs, but of the animals they write on. Meaning, not parchments, but the leather. One of the ways they dye that leather is they soaked it in different materials, and one of those materials involves dog feces.

Avielah: Yes. Okay, I didn’t know the story, but I did know that…

Nehemia: So, dogs were blessed to be able to be involved in writing the Torah scrolls because they didn’t bark when we left Egypt.

Avielah: Because they have so much tannic acid in their poo.

Nehemia: Well, that’s a different way of looking at it as well.

Avielah: This is why it says in the tradition that if a woman marries a tanner, and it turns out after she has lived with him, after they got married and she has lived with him, that she cannot stand to live with him because the smell is so terrible, she can petition the court for a divorce, for a get, and he has to pay out her ketubah as well.

Nehemia: Wow, I didn’t know that.

Avielah: And both of those things were quite unusual. A lot of times women weren’t even allowed to petition the court, it was really about the man giving the divorce.

Nehemia: Right.

Avielah: But she could actually demand a divorce from him, because she thought she could take it, and this is when they’re using, obviously, dog excrement.

Nehemia: And who knows what else, yeah.

Avielah: And the Dung Gate, that’s…

Nehemia: Very interesting. So, what I’d love to do at some point in the future is, if you could send me some samples of your writing…

Avielah: Yes.

Nehemia: …of the Yemenite stuff, I want to see… and I don’t have the tool here. I have a tool that can see if there’s carbon in it.

Avielah: Oh, okay.

Nehemia: Easily. Within a second I’ll know if there’s carbon or not.

Avielah: Oh, alright.

Nehemia: I won’t know if there’s iron compounds in it, because that requires a much more sophisticated machine that costs €50,000.

Avielah: They are very expensive, yes. They actually measure the metal content.

Nehemia: The XRF, right. We’d have to XRF, but I would just look at it under infrared light, at 940 nanometers, you can see if there’s carbon in it instantly.

Avielah: Yeah.

Nehemia: So, that would be interesting to see if he puts carbon… And also, I want to see your homemade ink, if it shows up as carbon.

Avielah: Right.

Nehemia: It should, but I don’t know.

Avielah: If I put soot in it, yes.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Avielah: It was olive oil soot, and it was also grapevine soot…

Nehemia: Right. So, it should, but maybe it doesn’t.

Avielah: …that they would use.

Nehemia: So, that would be really interesting.

Avielah: Yeah. So, I go foraging with Joumana, and she’s actually published a few books, like Inks and Paints of the Middle East, which you’d probably find really interesting.

Nehemia: Oh wow! Yeah, send me that.

Avielah: Yeah.

Nehemia: Absolutely.

Avielah: She’s also just a nice person.

Nehemia: Marc sent me something that somebody translated… is that her? It was an Arabic work that somebody translated.

Avielah: Yeah. Was it Alta Luci?

Nehemia: I don’t remember.

Avielah: Oh, okay. Yeah, it was probably her, yeah.

Nehemia: But it was really interesting. It was interesting because it had a lot of recipes.

Avielah: Oh yeah, that’s her.

Nehemia: Thank you so much. This has been amazing.

Avielah: Well, thank you. This was really fun.

Nehemia: Yeah!

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VERSES MENTIONED
Esther 1
Exodus 11:7

BOOKS MENTIONED
Even Sapir (1866) by Rabbi Yaakov Sapir
Paula Dei Mansi - Wikipedia

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OTHER LINKS
Online Course - Introduction to Hebrew Calligraphy (Allison Barclay (Avielah)) | Domestika
Soferet Avielah Barclay (@soferetavielah) • Instagram photos and videos

The post Hebrew Voices #188 – Writing a Torah Scroll: Part 1 appeared first on Nehemia's Wall.