A new dress for the ‘traveling Torah’

Description

The klaf that makes the Sefer, the scroll on which the Torah is written, is fixed at each end on a wooden pole in Hebrew called Etz Chayim (tree of life). In the synagogue the Torah scroll is housed standing upright in the Aron, or Ark, often together with several other scrolls, each with its own age, provenance, and history.

We treasure the Torah scroll always garbed with respect and beauty, for the biblical commandment of Hiddur Mitzvà (see parashat Tetzavvè). It usually wears a velvet mantle decorated with gold threads, though there are various customs and styles around the world, always with beautiful trimmings, beading and embroidery.

When in Synagogue we read the Torah portion of the week, or parashah, we 'undress' the scroll, we unroll the two Atzei Chayim, revealing to our eyes the text, uniquely handwritten by the Sofer or Soferet, the scribes. After the reading, we close it by rerolling the two atzei chayim toward the center and fastening them close together by means of a belt known as Gartel (in the Sephardic tradition) or in the Ashkenazi custom with a beautiful sash, a binder, called Wimpel. Like I said above, you can read more here .

This little traveling Torah is relatively low-key, while typically the Sefarim have gold or silver ornaments, of which I write in the 'Judaica' page of this website. However, a very nice ornament in this case is the ritual Yad, or 'hand', which you can see hanging from one Etz Chayim: it is a pointer that we use to follow the words when reading the Torah in order not to touch the ink with our fingers and damage the letters with the grease of our skin. It's just like a miniature hand with a ponting index finger and a long arm to hold it. Usually made of metal, of course throughout history artisans have created pieces from fine local materials. A vision that I cannot shake, for example, recounted by Rav Goldstein of the Modena Jewish community on the occasion of Jewish Culture Day 2023, is that during the Italian Renaissance Jewish artisans in Livorno created the yad out of coral (see this link) https://catalogo.beniculturali.HistoricOrArtisticProperty What a marvel!