Writing Our New Sefer Torah
The rabbis interpret the 613th commandment in the Torah to mean that every Jewish person must write a Torah scroll of their own. We are proud to participate as a community in this sacred obligation as we write our new sefer Torah with soferet Linda B. Coppleson. There will be many ways to engage in this project over the following 18 months, including writing a letter in the Torah scroll, donating, learning, celebrating, and more! See below for ways to get involved and check back here for regular updates.
On Sunday, April 14th, we launched the writing of our new Torah scroll. What a momentous day!
“Each of us recognizes that the Torah is not just an ancient relic of history, but rather the living thread connecting the entirety of the Jewish people and those who love them through space and time. … By helping to write a letter of Torah, we will bring ourselves to the Torah and in doing so, bring the Torah to the next generation and
even the next century of our congregation.”
—Rabbi Wendi Geffen
“Our tradition speaks of Torah being ‘black fire on white fire.’ The black fire represents the letters themselves and the white fire represents all the space in and around the letters. One way to think about this tradition is that Torah and its ongoing revelation relies on the engagement of each of us adding to the collective understanding of the text through our individual letters, words, paragraphs, and stories. We might never understand all of Torah, but we certainly can bring our whole selves to it.”
—Cantor David Goldstein
"When we bring our lives to Torah and Torah to our lives, we deepen the meaning of our sacred story and connectedness to the generations that came before us."
—Rabbi Lisa Greene
“It is an extraordinary privilege to be a part of the new Torah project at NSCI. Some of my most cherished moments have been around the Torah: chanting from Torah the Shabbat before my wedding, giving Torah blessing honors to my family, and becoming a rabbi before the open ark. I am so excited to help foster these and other formative sacred moments in this community, especially with the new Torah, letter by letter, word by word, verse by verse, and beyond.”
—Rabbi Jacob Leizman
