14 DAY TRIAL // A Maryland man spent eight years writing the 304,805 letters of the Torah by hand on a sheepskin parchment without a single error.
Richard Epstein, a psychiatrist and amateur Torah scribe, penned the final letters of the scroll – which took him eight years to complete – on Sunday, the Washington Post informs.
The 74-year-old man used a feather quill to write the entire Torah, and he had to pay painstaking attention to detail, as he was not allowed to make mistakes. According to Jewish tradition, even one error would have invalidated his entire work, making the text unfit for use in a Jewish house of worship, so accuracy is the most important factor when writing the holy text.
Normally, a professional scribe can pen a Torah in about a year, and completing one as an amateur is almost unheard of, which makes Epstein's accomplishment even more impressive.
“I feel like basically the Torah wrote me, more than I wrote the Torah — that it really shaped me,” the man said. “When you write, you go so much slower than you think, and especially when you’re writing the Torah. It’s wet and it’s gooey.”
Epstein is a member of the Chabad Shul of Potomac, Maryland, and his admirable achievement was celebrated with songs, dances and wonderment at the synagogue.
He told the aforementioned publication that he became interested in writing a Torah nearly a decade ago because he wanted to be closer to God. He trained as an apprentice for about a year, met with professional scribes and began by writing other religious texts before starting to work on his Torah scroll.
According to Wikipedia, the Torah is a collection of teachings that were given by God to Moses and represents the central concept in the Judaic tradition. Almost all Torah scrolls are written by a professional scribe, called a sofer, in Hebrew.
“It is absolutely unique for someone at his age with his background to train himself to be a sofer. I don’t think it’s ever been duplicated,” said Rabbi Shmuel Kaplan, the regional director of Chabad.
The materials Richard needed for the Torah cost about $10,000 (€7,300) and were purchased by the synagogue with funds donated by the congregants.
Mr. Epstein starred in a short documentary about his endeavor (embedded below), in which he explained his motivation and detailed the painstaking process of writing the Torah.
