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One of the questions I heard most often this week was "What kind of paper are you writing on?"
So, here's the answer: it's parchment, in Hebrew klaf, קלף, (with a kuf). Proper parchment is really a type of leather.
Devarim, the book of Deuteronomy, 31:19, says: And now, write for yourselves this song, teach it to the children of Israel, put in in their mouths, so that this song shall be testimony for me among the children of Israel. It says "put it in their mouths," and we learn from this that Torahs are made with products from kosher animals. So, the klaf can be made from the skin of almost any kosher animal - cow, goat, sheep, deer, bison... You could use chicken or turkey, but that would produce very small pieces, and probably not be worth it. You could even use a giraffe, if you could find one. The one kosher animal you may not use is a fish. Klaf can be made out of fishskin, but the rabbinic sources say that it smells truly terrible, and for that reason you can't use it for sacred scrolls - you don't want your holy books to be stinky.
I'm using calf parchment. It's easily obtainable, and has a nice smooth writing surface. Here's a site which talks about how klaf is made.
The picture at right is a piece of klaf held up against a window. You can see very clearly where the cow's backbone was. Sometimes you can also see where the kidneys were, and if it had a fat bottom, sometimes you see that as well.
The two images at left are close-ups of the surface of klaf. The top picture is the front side, and the bottom picture is the back side. A word about that, first: if you're processing parchment for a book, you make both sides the same, because you want to write on both sides of the page. But we only write on one side for our scrolls, so we only bother processing one side. That means that the front side is beautifully smooth and silky, almost like very very fine suede, but the back side is rougher and generally less "finished."
You can see that the front side has lines on it. All Torahs have to be written with lines - it's both a scribal aid, to keep the lines straight, and an halakhic (legal) requirement - i.e. even if you're really good at keeping your lines straight, you still have to have lines. You probably didn't notice them last time you read Torah, but they're almost certainly there - you just don't notice them because you're looking at the letters.
The lines are scored in. One can score one's own lines, with a ruler and some kind of scoring tool, such as an awl, or one can have the lines put in by the klafmachers (people who make the parchment). That's very clever - they have a grid of wires, and they set the wires to the appropriate positions, and then they press it hard into the klaf, bang, and that makes lines. Sort of like when your socks leave a line pattern in your ankle, only the klaf is dead so they don't fade away like they do on ankles.
So anyway, on the front side of this particular piece you can also see the veins. The front side is generally bleached quite white and nice, but sometimes hints of animal-ness remain.
On the back side of this piece, you can see the hair pattern quite distinctly. The back will often keep some of the colour of the cow - greyish, brownish, whatever. On most older scrolls, you won't see this, because for a long time it was the fashion to paint the backs with a substance called log, to make them uniformly white. This undoubtedly makes the backs of the scrolls attractive, but unfortunately it eventually makes the front look dreadful. Log is some variety of sticky substance mixed with some variety of white powder, for instance boiled klaf and powdered chalk, and over time the powder rubs loose onto the front side of the scroll, obscuring the letters, sometimes to the point where they're completely illegible. It also makes the scroll extrememly heavy - if you think about it, you're basically putting a layer of stone onto the back, so of course it's going to be heavy. So these days we generally don't coat the backs of Torahs, it's more trouble than it's worth. Of course, it helps that "natural" is back in fashion and has been for a while - I mean it's no longer the fashion for men to wear wigs, women corsets, etc.
Oh yes, and you generally get one sheet of parchment per cow, so you're going to use somewhere around sixty cows per Torah. That's a lot of cows. I'm brewing a post to salve our vegetarian consciences, stay tuned :)
So, here's the answer: it's parchment, in Hebrew klaf, קלף, (with a kuf). Proper parchment is really a type of leather.Devarim, the book of Deuteronomy, 31:19, says: And now, write for yourselves this song, teach it to the children of Israel, put in in their mouths, so that this song shall be testimony for me among the children of Israel. It says "put it in their mouths," and we learn from this that Torahs are made with products from kosher animals. So, the klaf can be made from the skin of almost any kosher animal - cow, goat, sheep, deer, bison... You could use chicken or turkey, but that would produce very small pieces, and probably not be worth it. You could even use a giraffe, if you could find one. The one kosher animal you may not use is a fish. Klaf can be made out of fishskin, but the rabbinic sources say that it smells truly terrible, and for that reason you can't use it for sacred scrolls - you don't want your holy books to be stinky.
I'm using calf parchment. It's easily obtainable, and has a nice smooth writing surface. Here's a site which talks about how klaf is made.
The picture at right is a piece of klaf held up against a window. You can see very clearly where the cow's backbone was. Sometimes you can also see where the kidneys were, and if it had a fat bottom, sometimes you see that as well.
The two images at left are close-ups of the surface of klaf. The top picture is the front side, and the bottom picture is the back side. A word about that, first: if you're processing parchment for a book, you make both sides the same, because you want to write on both sides of the page. But we only write on one side for our scrolls, so we only bother processing one side. That means that the front side is beautifully smooth and silky, almost like very very fine suede, but the back side is rougher and generally less "finished."You can see that the front side has lines on it. All Torahs have to be written with lines - it's both a scribal aid, to keep the lines straight, and an halakhic (legal) requirement - i.e. even if you're really good at keeping your lines straight, you still have to have lines. You probably didn't notice them last time you read Torah, but they're almost certainly there - you just don't notice them because you're looking at the letters.
The lines are scored in. One can score one's own lines, with a ruler and some kind of scoring tool, such as an awl, or one can have the lines put in by the klafmachers (people who make the parchment). That's very clever - they have a grid of wires, and they set the wires to the appropriate positions, and then they press it hard into the klaf, bang, and that makes lines. Sort of like when your socks leave a line pattern in your ankle, only the klaf is dead so they don't fade away like they do on ankles.
So anyway, on the front side of this particular piece you can also see the veins. The front side is generally bleached quite white and nice, but sometimes hints of animal-ness remain.
On the back side of this piece, you can see the hair pattern quite distinctly. The back will often keep some of the colour of the cow - greyish, brownish, whatever. On most older scrolls, you won't see this, because for a long time it was the fashion to paint the backs with a substance called log, to make them uniformly white. This undoubtedly makes the backs of the scrolls attractive, but unfortunately it eventually makes the front look dreadful. Log is some variety of sticky substance mixed with some variety of white powder, for instance boiled klaf and powdered chalk, and over time the powder rubs loose onto the front side of the scroll, obscuring the letters, sometimes to the point where they're completely illegible. It also makes the scroll extrememly heavy - if you think about it, you're basically putting a layer of stone onto the back, so of course it's going to be heavy. So these days we generally don't coat the backs of Torahs, it's more trouble than it's worth. Of course, it helps that "natural" is back in fashion and has been for a while - I mean it's no longer the fashion for men to wear wigs, women corsets, etc.
Oh yes, and you generally get one sheet of parchment per cow, so you're going to use somewhere around sixty cows per Torah. That's a lot of cows. I'm brewing a post to salve our vegetarian consciences, stay tuned :)
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