BREAD AND TORAH
Making Torah, baking bread, building community
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. >> Rabbis Linda Motzkin and Jonathan Rubenstein have served since 1986 as co-rabbis of Temple Sinai, a Reform congregation in Saratoga Springs.
Together they founded the Bread and Torah Project, through which they offer interactive educational programs based on their scribal arts and bakery activities.
Bread and Torah is inspired by the passage in the Mishna, Pirke Avot 3:17:
“Without bread, there is no Torah; without Torah there is no bread.”
The Torah is defined most specifically to mean the first five books, called the Pentateuch, or five books of Moses, of the 24 books of the Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible. This is commonly known as the Written Torah, meaning “instruction”, “teaching” or “law”.
Rabbi Linda is trained as a soferet, or female scribe, one of a handful of women in the world engaged in this sacred craft traditionally reserved for men. She is unique among female scribes in that she is the
only one who hand makes her own parchment, using deerskins donated by local hunters for the Torah scroll she is currently writing.
She is currently writing a Torah scroll and leading the Community Torah Project, a long term undertaking designed to involve a wide range of participants in various steps in the hands-on process of making a Torah scroll, from the processing of deerskins into parchment panels to the proofreading of the completed text.
Since 2004, Rabbi Jonathan has been teaching bread making and operating a non-profit, charitable bakery, Slice of Heaven Breads, out of the Temple Sinai kitchen. A volunteer program, Slice of Heaven Breads produces and sells a variety of breads and baked goods, with proceeds supporting hunger relief programs, Temple Sinai’s programs, and other charitable causes.
The bakery offers ongoing bread baking lessons, provides training and employment to individuals with disabilities, and donates and distributes challah weekly to nursing home residents, hospital patients, and the needy. Slice of Heaven Breads also donates products for local non-profit fund-raising efforts.
They were ordained in June, 1986, at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, and were the first rabbinic couple to share a sole rabbinic position in a synagogue. In addition to their duties at Temple Sinai, Rabbi Motzkin serves as the High Holy Day Chaplain at Skidmore College, and Rabbi Rubenstein is Pastoral Care Director at Four Winds–Saratoga, a private psychiatric hospital.
Affirming the importance of both spiritual and physical sustenance in Jewish life, Bread and Torah Programs provide creative, hands-on learning experiences that combine traditional Jewish scribal arts and bread making with Jewish spiritual teachings and practices. ••• The following two-part interviews include a conversation first with Rabbi Motzkin on her work as a soferet, or female scribe, and the traditional Jewish scribal arts, and one with Rabbi Jonathan as a bread maker. Both minister to the very real physical and spiritual needs of the community in Saratoga Springs, as well as being frequent presenters at conferences and retreats throughout the Northeast.
Many are unaware of the degree of their service to the homeless, those in need who seek assistance, and to participate in worship and the programs at Temple Sinai.
Rabbi Linda was taught the scribal art by Sofer Rabbi Eric Ray, and unassumingly refers to herself as “a practitioner.” Her work is a thing of beauty visually, is and unfailing faithful to the sacredness of her craft, which was revealed in her attention to the minutest detail of the process.
••• Part One: Conversation With Rabbi Linda Motzkin: Making Torah
Rabbi Linda, let’s explain to the readers what makes you unique as a Hebrew scribe.
“I’m not a typical scribe in that I’m a woman; there’re fewer than a dozen in the world. I’m also different in that I’m not a professional scribe. My profession is that I co-rabbi here with my husband, Rabbi Jonathan Rubenstein here at Temple Sinai since 1986.
“I’m writing a Torah in my spare time as a labor of love and as an educational project to involve people other than me into all the steps that go into the making of a Torah. I call what I’m doing the Community Torah Project. It’s a very long term endeavor because we’re basically making a Torah scroll from scratch.
“I get donations of deer skins fresh off the deer from Adirondack hunters and with the help of volunteers, I flesh the skins, remove the hair, soak them and stretch them on high stretching frames in my garage. It’s a lengthy process to make parchment from deerskin.
“Parchment is animal skin. A lot of people think it’s a form of fine paper, which is an easy mistake, because they sell parchment paper made from trees, but real parchment is made from animal skin.
“Torah scrolls are written on parchment that comes from the skin of a Kosher animal, so you’ll never, ever see a Torah scroll written on pigskin. Every parchment panel in a scroll will come from the same type of animal, whether it be a cow, sheep, goat or deerskin.
“Most scrolls today are made with goatskin, but the one I’m making on parchment with the help of volunteers from Adirondack deer skin. The ink is specially made for scribing.
“The Torah Project is unique in a couple of ways in that I’m female, and not a full time professional scribe. A professional will work on writing their Torah all day long, every day for twelve to eighteen months, just writing. That doesn’t take into account the time for making all the materials. That’s the amount of time it takes for a scribe to write in Hebrew all the words of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
“Torah scrolls contains 60 to 80 separate panels stitched together and each one is a skin of a different animal. A professional scribe is not making his materials. He buys them from a Kosher scribal supply shop, most of which are located in Israel or other areas where there are lots and lots of traditional Jews living.
“I try to set aside an hour every morning to write and five worker days to make parchment, working with volunteers from near and far. Jonathan and I travel and do teaching and educational programs called Bread and Torah, involving physical bread and spiritual Torah, sustenance.
“We travel to other Jewish communities, to universities where there’s a Jewish campus population, Hillel, we’ve traveled all over the United States and abroad. We just got back from a three weeks residency in Capetown, South Africa. Next month, we’ll be going to Carmel, California to synagogues there.
“Everywhere I travel, I bring some piece of the Torah project so that so that I’m not just doing a presentation on how a Torah is made, but I’m also saying “All of you here get to do a piece of the making of this Torah.
“When this Community Torah Project is finished, there will have been thousands of people who can say “I helped make a Torah.” In the Jewish tradition, it’s considered a mitzvah, which can be translated to mean a commandment, a religious obligation. To some time in your lifetime be a part of the making of a Torah scroll.
“For most Jews, that’s a mitzvah they never get an opportunity to fulfill, or if they do, they happen to be a member of a community at a time when they decide they need a new Torah scroll for that community, in which case, they way the members participate in the mitzvah is by writing a check to underwrite the cost of the labor of the scribe for the twelve to eighteen months to write the scroll for them.”
“So I’m giving people the opportunity to be part of the mitzvah of making a Torah scroll through some hands on participation. When I travel, I bring, for example, if it’s local, or I’ve driven as far as far as Charlottesville, Virginia, I have one high stretching frame that’s portable that I can unbolt and put in my car to drive to different locations.
“Sometimes I will bring a high stretching frame and a deerskin and what we will do together will be to stretch a panel of deerskin on the frame and everybody who helps will be able to say I participated in the making of a Torah by stretching one panel for a Torah.” ••• As if to say, a part of this Torah was the work of my hands.
“Yes. Or sometimes I’ll bring a bunch of panels that haven’t been stitched together that I’ve finished writing and I will set up a room full of table with panels under plexiglass, divide everybody into teams, with a partner,and their way of participating will be to check the letters of a line or two lines, or a paragraph or column-however much they want to do, and they can say ‘I helped make a Torah by proofreading column #147, lines 41 and 42.’
“Everybody will have helped in some way, like here: (points to entry in log where helpers enter their names and comment on their experience of helping to make part of a Torah.):
“Like here: This is the third volume of people who have proofread: “Bread and Torah Program at JCA Amherst, March 2017”. I need to track what’s been proofread, to make sure that every single column, letter, and line has been proofread three times to assure there are no mistakes. The proofreaders checking my work are human beings, and just as the scribe can make mistakes. Mistakes have been caught on the second, even the third proofread-not manybut it serves as a humbling reminder that even so, things slip by.” ••• This is why we have an editor in the newsroom.
“Because the Torah scroll is a sacred text and the Word of God it needs to be faithfully transmitted; you have to make sure there are no mistakes.
“After the panels of a Torah have all been fully checked, the separate panels sewn together and sewn onto the wooden rollers and has been dedicated to become a Torah scroll, it’s still possible that a mistake can be found, so it would be decommissioned.” ••• Do you take the whole panel out?
“Well, it depends on the nature of the mistake. Sometimes it’s a misshaped letter that can be corrected, not usually the whole panel. The point is that the Torah has to be a faithful transmission of the sacred text, so it can’t contain a single error and it has to be written by a human scribe with consciousness intent of creating something sacred who makes statements of sanctification at prescribed points in the process.
“There is an inherent contradiction between saying “a Torah has to be perfect and it has to be written by a human being; we all know human beings aren’t perfect. It’s important to be aware that even though a Torah scribe is copying from another text, we are not making a copy of a Torah. It’s subtle, but an important distinction.
“A Torah scribe is making a Torah. Every single Torah, when finished, dedicated and put into use is as sacred, as holy, as every other Torah scroll.
“The reading of the Torah is chronological; we have a holiday every fall that comes three weeks after Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, where we celebrate the end of one cycle, we read from the Torah and we begin a new cycle, an annual cycle.
“The Torah is divided into sections that range in length from one to about five and a half chapters long, corresponding to the weeks of the year, so we roll to the next and the next readings. We pick up from the week before, with the exception of holidays that might interrupt the cycle. For example, in the Spring for the holiday of Passover, there are special readings about the exodus that come from the Book of Exodus even though by that time of the yearly calendar we will have read past it.” ••• For more information on the Community Torah Project, visit www.BreadandTorah.org. Part Two will continue with a conversation with Rabbi Jonathan Rubenstein on the bakery and building of community through the participation of bread baking in the ministry he shares with Rabbi Linda Motzkin at Temple Sinai, and beyond.