Writing a Torah Scroll

Writing a Sefer Torah

Welcome to one of the unknown commandments!

To skip the Scriptures, click here...but why would you want to?

Sh’mot 17:14
¹⁴HASHEM said to Moses, “Write this as a remembrance in the Book and recite it in the ears of Y’hoshua, that I shall surely erase the memory of Amalek from under the heavens”
Sh’mot 34:27
²⁷HASHEM said to Moses, “Write these words for yourself,¹ for according to these words have I sealed a covenant with you and Israel”

D’varim 17:18
¹⁸It shall be that when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself two copies of this Torah in a book,² from before the Kohen'im, the Levi.

D’varim 27:3
³You shall inscribe on them all the words of this Torah, when you cross over, so that you may enter the Land that HASHEM , your God, gives you, “a land flowing with milk and honey,” as HASHEM , the God of you forefathers, spoke about you.

D’varim 27:8
⁸You shall inscribe on the stones all the words of this Torah, well clarified.(from which we guess that Moshe had bad handwriting, and possibly was left handed....but that's just a guess.)

D’varim 31:19
¹⁹So now, write this song³ for yourselves, and teach it to the Children of Israel, place it in their mouth, so that this song shall be for Me a witness against the Children of Israel.

This one is the actual commandment, but I thought I'd preface this with several verses showing how many times Moshe was commanded to write things. Five times Moshe is commanded to write the Torah— you are commanded only once. Aren't you glad you're not Moshe?

Yes, you're commanded to write a Sefer Torah. If your handwriting in Hebrew is bad, you should then buy one. In the midrashic thought, this is the same thing as writing one yourself. Where is that derived?

A Chazzan shall send up the prayers for those who do not know how. When they answer "Omeyn, Omeyn" to the prayer, it is as if they sent it up themselves. Cantor's manual of Jewish Law.

We write it this way, because it's amazing how much hostility some people show when faced with the commands of the Torah. Many of us are not used to the cultural idioms used in the Torah, and therefore what was plainly said 3500 years ago at Horeb seems confusing and vague.

But let's deal with writing your own Sefer Torah. Each King of Israel was commanded to write a Sefer Torah for himself. Some translations read “have written for him (like above)”— that's an error. It reads, “shall himself write...”

Now, every Jew is to consider himself a king and a priest (which means every woman shall consider herself a queen and a priestess, I guess). When seen in that light, D’varim 31 reinforces all of the other verses that you must write your own Sefer Torah. (It costs a lot less than buying one, let me tell you!).

Why does it read “put it in their mouths?” Because one originally was to memorize the Torah in the Hebrew, and the writing of the Sefer Torah was actually your learning guide, not the end result! You used your scroll to refresh yourself, to ascertain during the reading cycle that you knew your Torah. It's a lot easier to memorize just the verses of the 613, in your native tongue, believe me. But I believe all of us should strive as much as we can to know. What you know, you do.

D’varim 4:6
⁶You shall safeguard and perform them, for it is your wisdom and discernment in the eyes of the peoples, who shall hear all these decrees and who shall say, “Surely a wise and discerning people is this great nation!”
D’varim 34:9
     ⁹Y’hoshua son of Nun was filled with the spirit of wisdom, because Moses had laid his hands upon him, so the Children of Israel obeyed him and did as HASHEM had commanded Moses.

M’lakhim Rishon 3:28
    ²⁸All Israel heard the judgment that the king rendered and they were in awe of the king, for they saw that the wisdom of God was within him, to do justice.

Mizmor 37:30
³⁰The mouth of the righteous man utters wisdom, and his tongue speaks justice.

Mishlei 1:7
     ⁷The fear of HASHEM is the beginning of knowledge; foolish ones scorn wisdom and discipline.

The word "wisdom" here is chokma. It appears to be the Hebrew word for the memorized Torah (NOTE: We are not speaking about the ha'peh Torah, the oral Torah! For that go to The Oral Torah and Further Proofs of the Oral Torah!. By writing your own Torah it gives you a head start in memorizing it in the Hebrew.

Which of course brings up the need to learn fluent Hebrew— real Hebrew, not Wellhausian "reconstructed" Hebrew— the same people who brought you the "Yahw*h" theory are the same people who bring you "JEPD", "Second Yesha’yahu", "Q Document", and eventually, the "Posthumous Gospels", where they theorize that "Yeshua never told us he was the Messiah— that was invented by Sha'ul and added to the Gospels." If you accept their theory on Hebrew, you have to accept the rest of it. I personally reject it.

In view of this commandment, the best single way to honor it is to learn Hebrew, to speak it fluently and to write it. There's plenty of available resources for this.

The rules for writing a Sefer Torah are fairly simple:

You need a Kosher parchment

You must write on it with a pen made from the feather of a Kosher bird. Why? Writing it with a metal pen tip is felt to violate the verse that “you shall not use a metal instrument on the Altar of God.”

You must not write it out from memory, but from another Sefer Torah, to prevent error.

You must be mikveh'd before you write the holy name.

You must write out the name "Amalek" with the pen before you begin writing the scroll— and then mark through the name with a single stroke.

As you can see, it's a little more complex than it appears. And there's more to this than I have time to go into now, obviously. However, I find that just too many believers are willing to take a step into the "Holiness" (Qadoshim) that Adonai calls us to— and go no farther. What do you love more, your traditions or HASHEM ? Then believe the Torah when Moshe says, “Surely this is not beyond you!”

Vayikra 11:44
⁴⁴For I am HASHEM your God— you are to sanctify yourselves and you shall be holy, for I am holy; and you shall not contaminate yourselves through any teeming thing that creeps on the earth.
D’varim 8:1
     ¹The entire commandment that I command you today you shall observe to perform, so that you may live and increase, and come and possess the Land that HASHEM swore to your forefathers.

D’varim 10:12-13
    ¹²Now, O Israel, what does HASHEM, your God, ask of you? Only to fear HASHEM, your God, to go in all His ways and to love Him, and to serve HASHEM, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul, ¹³to observe the commandments of HASHEM and His decrees, which I command you today, for your benefit.

D’varim 7:6-11
     ⁶For you are a holy people to HASHEM, your God; HASHEM, your God, has chosen you to be for Him a treasured people above all the peoples that are on the face of the earth. ⁷Not because you are more numerous than all the peoples did HASHEM desire you and choose you, for you are the fewest of all the peoples. ⁸Rather, because of HASHEM 's love for you and because He observes the oath that He swore to your forefathers did He take you out with a strong hand and redeem you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.

⁹You must know that HASHEM, your God, — He is the God, the faithful God Who safeguards the covenant and the kindness for those who love Him and for those who observe His commandments. ¹⁰And He repays His enemies in his lifetime to make him perish; He shall not delay for His enemy — in his lifetime He shall repay him. ¹¹You shall observe the commandment, and the decrees and the ordinances that I command you today to perform them.

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¹ Sh’mot 34:27. God instructs Moses to write a new covenant [after the Golden Calf incident], which the people would accept, as they had accepted the original one, by saying, “We will do and we will obey,” and God, too, would ratify it in the form of a promise not to destroy them (Ramban). God taught Moses the entire Torah anew and gave him the second Tablets. A further result of the nation's fall from its earlier spiritual plateau was that they could not tolerate the holy glow that shown from Moses' face as a result of his new exposure to God's glory.

² D’varim 17:18. The king is to keep one copy of the Torah in his treasury, and the other one with him at all times (Rashi). These Scrolls remind the king, that august though his position may be, he is a servant of the Torah.

³D’varim 31:19. God commanded Moses and Y’hoshua to write the Torah and place the Scroll at the side of the Ark. It would remain as a constant reminder of Israel’s roots and the unchanging focus of its devotion. The Sages derive from this verse that every Jew is commanded to write a Sefer Torah, a commandment that can be fulfilled by writing a single letter of a complete scroll.