Elana and Robin delve into the Torah — what it is, how it’s different from the Bible (is it?), how it’s written, and how we care for it. 

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Show Notes:

    • Vocabulary
      • Here are some words mentioned during this episode and their definitions:
        • Ark: an ornamental chamber in the synagogue that houses the Torah scrolls
        • Bimah: the podium or platform in a synagogue from which the Torah is read
        • Holocaust: the genocide of European Jews during World War II.
        • Morah [Moreh]: Hebrew for a female [or male] teacher
        • New Testament: The second division of Christian Bibles is the New Testament, written in the Koine Greek language. 
        • Old Testament: the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew and occasionally Aramaic writings by the Israelites
        • The Prophets (Nevi’im): the second major division of the Hebrew Bible (the Tanakh), lying between the Torah and Writings. It includes Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, and Jonah.
        • Sofer: Jewish scribe who can transcribe holy scrolls and tefillin
        • Tanakh: the canonical collection of Hebrew scriptures, including the Torah, the Nevi’im, and the Ketuvim
        • Tefillin: a set of small black leather boxes with leather straps containing scrolls of parchment inscribed with verses from the Torah. Tefillin are worn by adult Jews during weekday morning prayers.
        • Torah: the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, namely the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.
        • Writings (Ketuvim):  the third major division of the Hebrew Bible (the Tanakh), coming after the Torah and The Prophets. It includes Psalms, Book of Proverbs, Book of Job, Song of Songs, Book of Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Book of Esther, Book of Daniel, Book of Ezra, and Chronicles.
  • Further Reading

Transcript:

Elana
 Hey, Robin.

Robin
Hey, Elana. I’m excited for this episode because I have a very cute story to tell about this topic. 

Elana
So fun. I can’t wait to hear it. First, though, let’s remind our listeners who we are and what this blogcast is all about. 

Robin
Okay. I’m Robin Matthews, Jewish Learning Venture’s graphic designer and the Director of PJ Our Way engagement and jkidpride.

Elana
And I’m Jewish Learning Venture’s CEO Elana Rivel, and we are the hosts of More Than 4, a blogcast that answers some of the questions people have about Judaism. 

Robin
And, as we suspected, we’re finding out that people have a lot of questions. 

Elana
More than four, even. 

Robin
You’re going to make sure that gets to every episode, aren’t you?

Elana
I definitely am, for sure.

Robin
So in addition to the thousand jobs I have here at JLV, I also teach the kindergarten/first grade class on Sundays at my synagogue. So, last week I was sitting with one of the kids during our morning song session in the sanctuary with our cantor. And this little boy was staring at the ark, like, absolutely fascinated with it. And he leans in and without taking his eyes off it, he whispers. “What is that?” Like, for a minute I couldn’t figure out what he was talking about because, I mean, like, it’s the ark. It’s the Torah. It’s the main event. Like, the big show, right?”

So I’m like, “Okay, that’s the ark. It’s where the Torah lives on the bimah.” And the look he gave me — I mean, I know I was throwing a lot of words at him, right? But he just looked gobsmacked and he goes, “What’s a Torah?” And I was like, some of these kids, I mean, some of them went to preschool at a synagogue, so, some of them have been in sanctuaries before, but many of them didn’t.

And especially since the pandemic, some of them have never even been inside a sanctuary. So all of this is brand new to them. And I mean, they’re all Jews, right? They’re being raised in Jewish families. And yet here’s this kid — and he can’t be the only one who doesn’t fully understand the Torah. I mean, do any of us, right? Really, but I mean, but he doesn’t even know what it is. 

Elana
Yeah, I love this Image that you’ve painted of him staring at this ark and wondering, like, what’s inside, right? It’s probably ornate — I don’t know what it looks like. 

Robin
Yeah, I don’t even know if he — it’s, it, like, turns and I don’t even know if he knew it had an inside, right? And so like when he was like, “what’s that?” And then I was like, there’s something more, he was like, “whaaaaat?” You know, it blew his mind. 

Elana
But it’s also that awe that, truthfully, that’s how sanctuaries are designed, right? They’re supposed to elicit this awe and amazement and the ark is kind of like a gift box, right? Because the Torah is inside of it. So, I just love this image that you’ve painted and it gets us really to our question. 

Robin
Yeah, it’s a perfect introduction, right? So we actually got this question a few times in a few different iterations, but the gist of it was always the same. “What is the Torah? Why is it special?” One person asked how the Torah was different from the Bible and another asked why we sometimes use the words Torah and Bible interchangeably. So can you help us unpack that? 

Elana
I will do my best. 

Robin
All right. Good luck to you.

Elana
So, Torah — the Hebrew word — comes from the same root as “study” or “teach.” So, a teacher is morah or moreh, and it has the same root word. And the Torah, where we first hear this word is actually in the book of Joshua, which we’re going to talk about in a minute, where he refers to Sefer Torat Moshe, BaMidbar, and Devarim. And we can go into the content of the five books another time, but they’re basically, those five books are the beginning of our story as a people. So it starts with the creation of the world and it takes us all up into almost the moment that the Israelites go into the promised land, into the land of Israel.

Robin
And this is all written down, right? 

Elana
And it’s all written down. So we’ll get to that in a minute, but to understand, you know, the Bible versus the Torah, so some people refer to it as the Bible. It’s the first five books. And you hear “Bible” in other religions as well. We know Christianity also has a Bible, and they refer to these five books as the Old Testament, and then they have the New Testament. In addition to the five books, we also have the books that are referred to as The Prophets. And some of them you may have heard of — Joshua, Samuel, he’s kind of more familiar, Isaiah, right? There’s a number of them and there’s some minor prophets. And then there’s what’s called Ketuvim or the Writings. And the Writings are things like the Psalms and Proverbs. And then we have the special books that we read on certain holidays. Those are all part of that. 

Robin
What’s in the Torah in the ark,. when we think of the Torah scrolls? Are all those things in there?

Elana
They are not. So what’s in those Torah scrolls are the five books.

Robin
And are you saying that, like, a Christian or Catholic Bible also includes the Torah? What we think of as the Torah, right? It’s not in Hebrew, probably. So, again, the Old Testament and the New Testament. And that’s all part of the Christian Bible. 

Elana
Correct.

Robin
I see.

Elana
Correct. Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about that Torah scroll that you refer to and the question you asked about, is it all written down? So, the answer is yes. There is a very specific way for it to be written. There is a special parchment and it takes about 65 animals to make one Torah scroll.

Robin
Because the parchment is actually not like tree paper, it’s, like, hide. 

Elana
That’s correct. It’s generally calf hide, but it can also come from goats and deer.

Robin
Wait, you’re vegan! Are there vegan Torahs? That are kosher? 

Elana
There are not vegan Torahs, but actually, that raises a different question. I’ve had people ask me about other ritual objects like tefillin, which is the ritual object that primarily men, although some women as well, wrap for morning prayer. So, it’s like that leather strap you wrap around your arm and over your head, and it’s only made from leather. And so also, right, there’s not yet a vegan version that’s considered kosher that I know of. 

Robin
So is there a vegan exception? If you’re a vegan, is there, like an exception for which, for you maybe, not for everybody…

Elana
Well, so I actually reached out to a rabbi a few years ago about this, and what someone shared is that sometimes what vegans will do is they’ll use a used pair as a way to sort of show the, not recycle per se, but the idea that it sort of carries on the tradition and that you’re not, starting from a new animal, but you’re actually taking something that’s already been repurposed.

Robin
So that’s interesting. I mean, I guess I sort of, when you said it, I was like, oh yeah, Torahs are written on hide. But I didn’t think of it. And obviously then Bibles that are printed, are printed on paper, right? 

Elana
Right. For sure. For sure. So there are, um, the Torah is really long. If you unrolled it, there are 245 columns of text. There are 304,805 letters. 

Robin
Wow. 

Elana
Which seems like an awful lot of letters. And they are all handwritten. 

Robin
So, no, Torahs are printed? Like, no kosher — 

Elana
That’s right. Torahs that are used in ritual are all handwritten. It takes about a year for the whole process, and you have to be trained. There’s a person called a sofer, a scribe who writes the Torah. And they, there are apprenticeships and things like that, right? Because you have to have a very specific handwriting. It’s, I mean, they all look basically exactly the same. There’s special fonts that you’re basically using. 

Robin
And there are printed Torahs that are in books. Like, people can sit in a sanctuary…

Elana
…and follow along through a book. And you can have one in your library and all of that. 

Robin
But you wouldn’t, like, sit in your seat and open a scroll. 

Elana
It’s a little big. It’s a little heavy to do that. And depending on where you are, right? If you’re at the beginning, it’s very heavy on one side and very light on the other. And of course, when you get to the end as well. So it’s a very methodical process to have them written. If you make a mistake or there’s a smudge, you have to — they’re done on sheets of the parchment that are then stitched together and if there’s a mistake, you have to replace the whole sheet. You can’t just, like, use white out, right?

Robin
Like kosher white out. 

Elana
Exactly. Sometimes you can scrape some of the ink off depending on what it is, but you often have to sort of, you know, get rid of that. And congregations or places that have Torahs need to check their Torahs every number of years to ensure that they haven’t smudged or haven’t somehow become unkosher, something ripped.

Robin
And I feel like every Torah I’ve seen has been, like, this has been in our synagogue for so many generations or years or whatever. Are there still new Torahs being written?

Elana
There are, you know, I don’t know how many, but you can commission. So sometimes there’s new congregations or somebody has died and someone wants to honor that person with the gift of a Torah. They’re very expensive, as you can imagine, because of the work that needs to go into it. Our synagogue a number of years ago held a fundraiser creating a Torah for the congregation where people had an option to work with the sofer and write one of the letters in the Torah scroll, which was a very meaningful experience and, you know, very multi generational and feeling like, now you own — you know — you’re really part of that Torah. 

Robin
And we, our synagogue, has one that was rescued from the Holocaust. Yeah. Because it is so sacred, right? So they’re, during that time, they were like sort of holed up in rooms to be saved.

Elana
That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. A number of congregations have that. And it speaks, of course, to the testament and the longevity of Torahs, right? They’re built to last, so that they can be used from generation to generation in that way. So because they are so methodically written, it also impacts how we treat the Torah, right? So when it lives in the Ark, which is generally where it lives, it’s covered with a cover and sometimes you see very ornate bells that are on top of the scrolls. Sometimes there’s a breastplate on it, sometimes there’s a silver yad, which is the tool that we use to read the Torah. We try not to touch the Torah with our fingers because our fingers might be dirty and also has oil on it. And that can interact with the ink and with the paper and can deem it unkosher. So when you’re reading from the Torah, you use some tool to help you keep your place and so it generally looks like a pointed finger. So again, just something that’s not your fingers that won’t damage the Torah scroll.

Robin
And we read it in Hebrew. 

Elana
And we read it in Hebrew. 

Robin
And there’s a translation, but we don’t read the English.

Elana
Not only do we not read the English out loud, the Hebrew that’s in the Torah does not have the Hebrew vowels in it. So those who are chanting, learn the Hebrew from another book. 

Robin
The bane of every B’nei Mitzvah student is learning it without vowels.

Elana
Well, it is a really hard transition. 

Robin
It is.

Elana
It is. And some words, right, look like they could be any words, depending on, you know, context. So that’s a big difference to me.

Robin
That always, as a kid, was a big difference to me between the Torah and the Bible. Like yes, Yes, the Bible has more and it’s sort of, the second part of it is a different story or more story or whatever, but that when we read Torah, a lot of people don’t understand what they’re reading.

Elana
Correct. So you can read the translation, but a lot of times it’s really more about the ritual of hearing and listening and not necessarily translating.

Robin
Whereas I feel like the experiences I’ve had in, you know, various churches or whatever, visiting with friends, is that when they read from the Bible, you understand it. It’s a different kind of —

Elana
Often it’s sort of being sermonized. You’re getting the explanation. So certainly in many synagogues you have a rabbi or some person who stands and talks about the portion of the week and tries to give the context and the relevance for who we are today. I mean, one of the things about reading the same thing over and over every year is we are different people every year. And so we might hear something new or pick up on some nuance that we didn’t understand the year before or five years ago. But more often than not, you’re also hearing a whole lot of words that you don’t really understand. And that’s why we try to follow along with the book version, as you said, is to get that context while we’re also hearing.

Robin
Right.

Elana
But it’s, I think, the chanting of the Torah and listening to it when you, when you’re listening to someone who’s really — really knows how to do that, it’s so beautiful. And it actually helps to tell the story because the — it’s called trope, which are like the notes of the Torah, that helps to tell the story. It’s where the pauses are. It’s where. when something’s sort of exciting or interesting to know it goes up or it might go down and it helps even if you don’t understand the story there there’s melody to it.

Robin
There definitely is. There’s like a rhythm to it; you know that a section is over, you can hear it.

Elana
Yeah. And then at the end when the Torah reading is finished you raise up the Torah and you’re supposed to — whoever raises up the two scrolls is supposed to open it so you can see at least three of the columns. And one of the things I love about that is there are parts of the written Torah that have interesting breaks or look special in the text itself. So as an example, when, the Israelites walk through the Red Sea. There’s a visual; there are breaks between some of the words, so it almost looks —

Robin
Like it’s like an e.e. cummings poem, it’s like all over the page. 

Elana
Yeah, so you can almost imagine that’s the path that they took, or the Ten Commandments stand out. I mean, I just always think it’s so neat to see some of those visuals because I’m a visual learner, to be able to sort of see that reflected in how the Torah is laid out.

Robin
I feel like we could talk about this forever. 

Elana
We could. And I said to you, I don’t know what we’re going to talk about!

Robin
I know, right? And I’m like, I have like 19 more questions as I go, like, right? I mean, I always feel like I come away from these episodes definitely a little bit smarter. 

Elana
Then we’re hitting our goal. 

Robin
I mean, I think you were supposed to say I couldn’t possibly get any smarter. 

Elana
Oh, sure. Right. You couldn’t possibly, but you know, even geniuses like you have more to learn.

Robin
Yeah. I suppose that’s true.

Elana
And if you have a question about Judaism, no question is too big or too small. Let us know. Send us an email at morethan4@jewishlearningventure.org (use the number 4), tweet us at, @jlearnventure. Find us on Facebook at facebook.com/jlearnventure. Or reply in a comment wherever you found this podcast linked: Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook.

Robin
So what question are we going to answer next episode? 

Elana
We’ll have to wait and see what the people want to know. 

Robin
All right. Well, until then…