A journey of 304,805 steps begins with one letter

By Shawn Macomber/ Correspondent
Wednesday, March 8, 2006

For those who live by the torah, there is plenty to keep them on their toes. Within the pages of Judaism’s sacred text there are no fewer than 304,805 letters assembled into words which make up some 613 commandments, ending with the daunting requirement that every believer must write his or her own torah.
Lest any Jew simply grab a legal pad and begin scribbling, be forewarned that producing a torah fit for use in the eyes of God is a bit more grueling task than it might seem on the surface. A kosher torah must be written on rolls of parchment flayed from the back of a cow or calf, for example, and if any one letter touches another or the ink within a letter cracks, theentire torah is no longer kosher.
So it was this Sunday afternoon when more than 100 local Jews gathered at Chabad of Chestnut Hill to celebrate - with a chocolate fountain flowing as freely as the wine and soda, no less - the beginning of the first-ever custom torah for the Chestnut Hill community.
"This I write for the holiness of the torah," Rabbi Moshe Klein, a world renowned, fourth generation scribe from New York intoned in a lilting, singsong voice as he dipped a turkey quill into a plant based black ink and drew the first letter to cries of "Mazel tov!" In another room children gathered earnestly attempting to recreate the calligraphic beauty of Klein’s hand, writing their names carefully in Hebrew.
"We survive as a community only because of the torah," Klein explained a short while later. "It is all that binds the Jewish nation together. This torah we begin today is written from and connected to a torah begun before it, which is connected to one before that all the way down to the initial divine revelations Moses received."
Now the torah will be sent to Israel, where Rabbi Uminer assured the crowd that "a God-fearing Jew with beautiful handwriting," was waiting patiently to inscribe the great part of it over the next six to eight months. Then it will be returned and Rabbi Klein will make what one hopes will be a less calamitous drive from New York again to finish it.
For Rabbi Uminer, the complexity of the process and the sacrifices required are not obstacles to obeying the last commandment, but, instead, important reminders of what he believes God intended the commandment to serve as.
"It might be tempting to look at a torah and say, ’So what if one letter touches another?’" Uminer said. "But we are told, no, if you don’t worry about every letter the torah is not kosher; it is no good. It’s an important lesson because it teaches us to attend to the individual. Every individual letter, every commandment, every single person is important. If we abandon any of these, we are not complete."
Klein glowed during the ceremony.
"It is an honor to be a part of a day such as this," he said. "The happiness today should be the same as the day one marries off their first born child. It is a great cause for celebration in every way."