Torah, She Wrote

“Therefore, write down this poem and teach it to the people of Israel; put it in their mouths, in order that this poem may be my witness against the people of Israel.” (Deuteronomy 31:19)

This last mitzvah in the Torah sounds more like a threat than a promise; ‘a witness against the people of Israel’, rather than a witness for, or a sign. And so, in a typical rabbninic move, the 3-4th century rabbi Rava decided that it meant that every Jew is obligated to write their own Torah (Sanhedrin 21b). Each one of us should write our own Torah during our lifetimes.

That’s a pretty tall order, even if you have neat handwriting. And so of course, over time, the understanding changed so that the obligation is only that every Jew should own a Torah. 

Though we cannot write our own scrolls we can learn from the first female scribe in 250 years, Avielah Barclay. 

“At the age of 10, she started teaching herself Hebrew. Other interests took over in her teenage years, but in her 20s, her life suddenly took a new direction. As a result of a car accident, her right hand was totally crushed. While teaching herself to write again, she remembered how much she had enjoyed Jewish calligraphy. She says she felt God's calling to take up the sacred art, and eventually converted to Judaism. Her rabbi's response to her interest in calligraphy was cautious: not willing to discourage her, he was however aware that many Orthodox Jews would disapprove of a woman taking up an occupation traditionally held by men.

But Avielah persevered, and after seven years of training, travelling between Vancouver and Jerusalem, she finally qualified as a scribe”.