Meeting an Ancent One

Today at church I found out that P'nai Or (the Jewish congregation that shares our building) was going to have the Soferet Aviel Barclay there to work on their Sefer Torah, and that we could come watch. Now, there are other Sofers (male), but she is the only female. However, I am getting ahead of the story.

I was walking around with Stuart when she came in with a member of P'nai Or. I recognized her from the article they had posted about her coming to repair their Torah, so I went over to welcome her and tell her what an honor it was to have her here. They went back into the room to get ready. A little while later, the gentleman came back out. He asked when service would be over, since they had not had the foresight to get the Torah out ahead of time. I assured him it would not bother anyone if we went and got it right now. He was surprised and assured me he did not want to interrupt the service. I just smiled and began to lead him back to behind the pulpit.

When we got back there, it was obvious where the Torah was. As he opened the Ark, he said "Shalom. How are you doing?" He explained that at service, each of the actions (opening the Ark, pulling back the curtain, untying the rope, and removing the Torah) would be performed by a different individual. When he went to close the Ark, he had some trouble, so I helped him. The whole exchange took maybe a minute, but it almost brought me to tears. For the first time in my memory, I was meeting an ancient entity in person, one who was older than I am, and would probably outlive me.

After service, we had been invited to go back and watch the Soferet work. She could not talk to us or turn from her work while she was forming a letter. If she did, she would have to remove that letter entirely and start again. However, when she was between letters (as she was for most of the next hour) she told us many amazing things. Things like:

• Each letter has it's own soul. They can only be expanded. If the character has gotten too big, it must be removed entirely and a new letter formed.
• During the Holocaust, some sifrei Torah were formed by taking the undamaged portions of damaged sifrei Torah and binding them into a new scroll. The damaged portions were buried.
• The gaps between the letter must all be the proper width, and the lines must all be justified. That means that you must shrink or expand the letters to make the lines the right length.
• A Sefer Torah can be made from the skin of any animal that the Jews can eat. She mentioned that she has seen a beautiful deerskin Torah.