+ We’re Writing a New Torah

Dear Tamid Families and Friends,

A great rabbinic sage once said, “only when you touch Torah can Torah touch you.” I mentioned this at our Simchat Torah service last week and over the next few years, we are all going to have a chance to touch Torah, literally.

We dedicated a new Ark for our congregation on Rosh Hashanah, now it’s time to fill it with a new Torah. One of the 613 Commandments in our tradition refers to the creation of a Torah: “In your lifetime, every Jew should write a Torah.” It’s our time.

I have this image in my mind that every person in our congregation and our friends and families will each find their individual moment to sit with the scribe of our new Torah and to write a letter, their letter. 

In the ancient days, a scribe would take a piece of animal skin and sit in the town square and write with a quill in hand. Our scribe is going to sit at Tamid for the next few years and help us write our scroll – all 304,805 letters. It may take 2-3 years, but to know that we all had our moment with this Torah, it will be worth every second of the journey. 

Like everything we do at Tamid, I’d like to make this Jewish experience as personal to your lives as we can by having you write a letter in the section of Torah that may mean something to you. Perhaps a letter from your Bar/Bat Mitzvah torah portion whether your ceremony was 40 years ago or last year; or, your child’s Bar/Bat Mitzvah reading that is upcoming; or, in honor of a loved one. I’d love for all of our Torah readers to say: “I wrote one of the letters in the section of the scroll that I just read.”  Whatever the connection, I hope that everyone who wishes, will take the opportunity to write the new Tamid Torah. 

Writing Torah is more than just putting quill to paper. For our congregation, it’s about tapping into the history of our tradition, to the days when Ezra the Scribe first collected the various parchment texts and redacted the Torah. It’s about participating in the sacred act of creating Torah and Jewish life. And for each of you, it’s about expressing yourselves in the Tamid Torah and making a permanent mark on our congregation for time eternal.

Our students will study the Torah writing process in Hebrew School, we will meet to write and to study, and at the end of this process, we will have brought a new Tree of Life to the world. Our goal is that every adult and child in our congregation writes a letter and contributes to the Torah. Stay tuned for more information about how you can be involved from our project chair, Alla Liberman, thank you Alla. 

Darren