An ancient text message for modern times
Rabbi and scribe worked painstakingly on a Torah scroll, a rare undertaking for a woman
Yonah Lavery-Yisraeli is a modern-day woman with an ancient calling.
Lavery-Yisraeli, 33, is a Hamiltonian, a rabbi, and a scribe. Her work involves writing documents in Hebrew in tiny, uniform script — labour that is both painstaking and prayerful.
In the past several years, Lavery-Yisraeli has written dozens of mezuzah scrolls (called klafs), which are placed in decorative and protective cases and hung on the doorposts in Jewish homes, as well as her biggest accomplishment: a Torah scroll.
It’s somewhat of an unusual vocation in many ways, not only because there are very few Jewish scribes in North America, but because even fewer scribes are women. Traditionally, scribes have always been
men, and in some Orthodox communities, women aren’t permitted to touch a Torah, let alone write one.
Still, Lavery-Yisraeli said she is part of a growing community of female scribes.
“In communities where people interpret that only men can be scribes, of course it’s only men,” she said. “But when either gender is eligible, it’s almost all women.”
Born in Northern Ireland, Lavery-Yisraeli has lived in Toronto, Saskatoon, Jerusalem and Gothenburg, Sweden. She came to Hamilton three years ago when her husband, Hillel LaveryYisraeli, became the rabbi at Beth Jacob Synagogue.
Lavery-Yisraeli was commissioned to create the Torah scroll — the Jewish text containing the first five books of Moses — by a community in Madison, Wis.
Members of that community had approached a well-known scribe named Jen Taylor Friedman, a Montreal resident by way of the United Kingdom, who is believed to be the first woman to ever write an entire Torah scroll. However, the community only had a modest budget that Taylor
Friedman wasn’t able to meet (an average price for a new Torah scroll is roughly $30,000).
“For many communities which are a little smaller or starting out, getting a Torah scroll is a difficult part, because a Torah scroll is so expensive,” LaveryYisraeli said. “You’re paying someone to sit there for a whole year, or more, and that’s completely aside from the cost of the materials. It’s expensive for good reason.”
Taylor Friedman, who had become somewhat of a mentor figure within the small community of female scribes, recommended
Lavery-Yisraeli for the job — who, as a first-time Torah scribe, would be better able to adhere to the budget). LaveryYisraeli spent the next two years working on the scroll.
As daunting as it may seem to write 304,805 letters by hand, there are also high expectations placed upon the scribe. In the Jewish tradition, a Torah isn’t just a sacred text; it’s a sacred object. Writing a scroll is considered to be a holy act, and in order for the Torah to be kosher, a scribe must adhere to strict rules and regulations.
The scribe must be in good standing within the Jewish community and must be observant. It’s also expected that the scribe would privately follow the guidelines that are being presented in public, Lavery-Yisraeli said.
“I think of it as being very similar to a car mechanic. You don’t know what the mechanic is presenting you with, you don’t speak that language and you really have to trust them,” she said.
“I think there are a lot of very inconvenient rules, and it takes a very strong person to be able to say, ‘Even if I won’t make as much of a profit’ or ‘Even if that’s going to complicate my relationship with my client,’ I still have to commit to being transparent and to dedicating myself to this discipline.”
There are also rules relating to materials and composition that must be followed: The Torah scroll must be written on the skin of a kosher animal (in this case, a cow — an interesting material for the vegetarian Lavery-Yisraeli). The ink must be as black as possible (for permanence and legibility, she said), and the text must be fully justified — meaning the characters must form tidy lines evenly on both the right and left side of the column.
The Torah scroll, which has been in Madison for the past several years, was returned to
Lavery-Yisraeli’s west-end Hamilton home this June after electronic proofreading software — which wasn’t available when it was completed in 2014 — uncovered some minor errors in the text. She completed the corrections, then drove the scroll back to Madison.
“It was a little funny seeing it again. I was pleasantly surprised. In my memory, it was splotched and stretched out,” she said.
“It was very important to me to try and finish every line without stretching the letters out too much — which is difficult to predict since, in every line, the composition of the letters is different. I’ve gotten much, much better at that since I’ve written it, so that was one of the things that I thought I would come back to and find everything distorted and pulled out of shape. But it’s not so bad.”
For Taylor Friedman, that statement encapsulates LaveryYisraeli’s humility and attention to detail.
“The words for Yonah are rigorous, learned, thorough and humble,” Taylor Friedman said. “She’s quite extraordinary in those regards.”