Hatam Soferet

Fun and games today: the sewer had backed up into the shul, so we couldn't work in the allocated classroom (in the basement) on account of the carpeting being saturated with Nasty Ick. It smelled BAD, even with the basement door closed. So we worked upstairs in the conference room, on very deep, soft chairs, which tilted backwards alarmingly at inopportune moments. We were fixing lettering on a dinky wee Torah; my favourite part of the day was the bit where we were trying to decide how the three of us could work on it most efficiently, and the answer involved cutting the Torah in half. How often do you get to do that?! Slicesliceslice, and it became a Torah in Two Parts. We'll sew it back together when we're done.

I microwaved a quill to try & harden it (I hadn't brought any alum-boiled quills, and I wanted a hard quill), but I put it in for a minute, and it melted. Moral: a minute is too long for microwaving quills.

I got up at 5am today to catch a bus to Philadelphia. The 5am part wasn't so great, but the Philadelphia part was fun. I was assessing the Torahs in a shul, which means taking a whole lot of notes regarding the conditions of the sefer with an eye to estimating how much it'll cost to restore them.

They had six Torahs - three bad, three good.

One was in basically good condition but for the seams, which someone had stuck together with duct tape. People, please - if your sefer's seam breaks, either use artist's or archivist's tape, or don't tape it. The duct tape had not only dried up but had left hideous, hideous stains, which probably contain elements of non-kosher animals as well as being a ghastly orange-yellow - and the seams still need to be fixed. Overall gain negative.

Two were hugely satisfying, because the text and klaf were in lovely condition, really fine quality, and nicely written - but very, very, very dirty. So dirty that they looked to be in awful condition and perhaps beyond restoration, but hurrah! the dirt will almost all come off, and they'll look like new Torahs by the time I'm done with them. I was very happy about this, because it was such a nice surprise for the shul! Instead of two Torahs headed for retirement, two high-quality sefarim which won't cost too much to repair...nice!

One was in a terrible condition, but it was a Czech Memorial Scroll, so you'd sort of expect that. It would be fiendishly expensive to repair - it had extensive flaking, which I'd guess came from being stored in a damp warehouse by the Nazis - but those scrolls are terrific educational tools, there's all kinds of history/geneaology/shul-twinning things that can go on. Sometimes they have enough sentimental/historical value that repairing them is worth the expense. After all, these were scrolls that the Nazis collected up to put in their museum of Jewish stuff - they were supposed to be the last things that were left after the Jews had all been killed. So restoring them to use carries a pretty powerful message.

Two were in truly terrible condition, really beyond repair from a financial perspective. They had been designated Junior Scrolls, which meant they were hanging out in the Hebrew school area. It's not clear what they're used for; they can't be being read from since they're largely illegible. One of them had crumbs and sesame seeds in it. I'm a little bit concerned by this; it seems to me that these scrolls ought to be retired, because it doesn't seem to me that the educational benefit outweighs the indignity. What do you think - am I over-reacting?

There was a collection of Russian cantors visiting the shul - mostly Russians who got here and became cantors (some of them had been opera singers in Russia) - they were doing choral stuff for fun. I listened to them for a bit; they were very nice to listen to indeed. Unusually for a choir of cantors, they had excellent blend. Every other cantorial chorus I've heard has had simply awful blend - prima donnas all trying to out-prima-donna the rest. So to hear a choir of cantors singing like a choir was a treat and a half!

Philadelphia seemed very pleasant, the bits of it I saw. Another nice city to add to the list of Nice Places I've Seen. My favourite bit was the statue of Mr Penn on top of the city hall, because it used to be against planning laws to build higher than his hat (this was revoked twenty years ago to encourage business growth). I found this charming.

Journey back marred by the movie - the screens were not showing anything, but the soundtrack was playing: a mixture of very loud music, indistinct speech, screams, and gunshots. At 5pm! It doesn't seem appropriate to be showing people getting killed for fun on public transport, especially during the day. This is basically why I prefer taking the Chinatown buses when I can - no nasty movies.

But when I got home, my W had made supper and it was ready and yummy. A good day.

Spent yesterday working in a studio in which music was playing. Pirated music, and the others were merrily chatting about various things having to do with pirating music.

They're working on Torahs. You know, that book dealing with communal integrity and civil justice. It says Lo tignov - don't steal - right there in front of them. I pointed this out, and heard a variety of excuses to justify pirating music ranging from vaguely creative (but unconvincing) to downright pathetic. Soferim are supposed to have a high degree of integrity. They are not supposed to do things which they know are wrong and make up feeble excuses to justify it. It's disturbing to see people working on the symbol of all that is good whilst enjoying stolen property.

I can understand people working on a Torah and going out to eat treif food for lunch - that comes from having decided that the religious principle of kashrut can be discarded. If you're Reform, that's fine. But I doubt that they would also think that religious prohibitions on stealing can be discarded, or that the communal principle of adherence to civil law can be discarded in order to steal. Reform doesn't go that far.

Whether you like it or not, until the civil law changes, pirating music is stealing. It damages people's livelihoods, and undermines communities. This is why it is illegal. A sofer occupies a position of trust within a community; a sofer can't survive without a community's trust. He has a duty to repay the community's trust by acting in a way that won't damage the community. Providing pasul sefarim damages the community in one way, and stealing damages it in another way.

Please, soferim. If you must listen to pirated music, don't do it while you're working on Torahs.

This morning was wicked cold, so much so that when someone dropped her coffee on the platform this morning, it had turned into a streak of iced coffee by the time her train had pulled out. In this kind of weather I read accounts of Antarctic explorations; those chaps went around without scarves in negative Farenheit and complained that it was too hot when the temperature approached freezing-point.* I survived the walk to Sinai Free by tying my coat collar up around my ears using my scarf (ahah!), and hung over the heater in the studio thawing before starting work. Fraid I'll never be a polar explorer.

Work: more lettering this poor flaky Torah. Exodus had several columns which were nothing but flakes (a healthy high-fibre way to start the day, no?), and they took about an hour apiece to fix. Only Genesis left to do, though, and it's not quite as bad as Exodus. The scroll didn't like the heater, it started to complain and curl up at the edges. Tough cookies, I was freezing without the heater, so I kept it flat by viciously rolling it up.

Thence to teaching: my grown-up student is coming along nicely. She mentioned that she would like to read at her son's bar mitzvah, but didn't think she could do a whole aliyah. She showed me the shortest aliyah, and insisted that it was beyond her, so I made her go through it, and she discovered that actually she probably could do it after all. I get rather a lot of pleasure when my students grow wings like that. Worth staying late for.

Home - to carpets! in all directions!

* South - Shackleton's abortive expedition to cross the Antarctic, which turned into a camping-trip on ice floes, pitching tents on the ice and going about in minimal amounts of clothing. Yet to come is the incredible bit where they all get home safely.

Yesterday I saw an interesting stain on a Torah. Coffee cup rings. Three or four brown ring stains, where someone had put a cup of coffee (or maybe tea) onto the parchment, and just like a table will stain, the parchment had stained. Coffee stains don't come out of tables easily, and they don't come out of Torahs either, even if you use a scalpel as well as sandpaper.

But how on earth did they get there in the first place? Who on earth would put their coffee down on a Torah?