I had no idea this was falling out of common knowledge. Boost to get it rolling again!
Quick tip from an ace who’s been wearing the black ring for like five plus years now and has gone through several either broken or too scratched to wear- save yourself the trouble, go straight for ceramic.
I had an absolutely FANTASTIC weekend at Montréal's pride parade, where I simply came to watch the parade with my Panromantic Asexual flag I made, and then when the Asexuality section of the parade came around, I was invited to join in!!
What a joy! I thank every single person who was there with me. It made my weekend!
"I would like to put this in context for you. A synagogue in Beverly Hills was vandalized and the Torah scrolls were damaged. Let me explain how serious this is to the Jews.
Damaging a Torah is not like damaging a bible, even an expensive and valuable one.
A Torah scroll is written, BY HAND, with a quill, and specially prepared ink on specially prepared animal hides. Every one. It takes a scribe the better part of a year to write it, and there are special calligraphic standards. ALSO if the scribe screws up one single letter, the whole scroll must be destroyed. They are not mass-produced. You won't find them in your nightstand in a hotel.
A Torah scroll is a historic object. For instance, many of them are hundreds of years old and few new ones are made. The Torah in my temple was smuggled out of a Jewish town in Russia before it was burned to the ground. Bibles are mass-produced and have been for years. There are a few priceless bibles. EVERY Torah scroll is a historic object.
A Torah scroll is HELLA expensive. Many are literally priceless - as in no amount of money can buy them. They are gifted, loaned, and tracked carefully. A person doesn't own one - a person really can't. ONE. There are too few and they are too valuable for one person (generally speaking). A **congregation** owns one. ONE. Unlike bibles where each congregant may own many copies.
A Torah scroll is paraded proudly around the synagogue while people stand in respect and sing the special Torah-appreciation song. People reach out their prayer shawl or prayer book to touch it so it's not accidentally gotten dirty by someone's hand. People on the edges of the pews that touched the Torah "transfer" the touch by touching prayer shawls or prayer books to their neighbors and then kiss that book spine or prayer shawl because THAT is how important a Torah scroll is.
The Torah is so valuable that we do not touch the scroll with a hand while reading it. We have a special pointer stick, often with a tiny sculpture of a human hand at the end, made of metal or wood, to hold one's place in the line of text just so your hands don't accidentally get dirt on it, and so generations of use don't smudge the text.
The Torah scroll has specially made rollers to put it on, a special belt to put around it, a decorated velvet or brocade cover to put over it, and the gold and silver crowns are placed on the top of the rollers. Every one of them. ALL of them. It is a huge production to make. We literally put jeweled crowns on every Torah.
The Torah must be held in a special ark, which is a huge and valuable large cabinet. Every single one. You can't just throw it in a nightstand, a backpack, or a classroom.
The Torah is so spiritually important to us that we will never allow it to be in the dark. A special light burns in every sanctuary, never to be extinguished (nowadays with special generators in case of a power outage). My last name is Leitman, which meant my family were the people who showed up at the sanctuary in snowstorms, in the middle of the night, to make sure that light never went out. Just keeping the Torah under light is a job so important that it becomes a family legacy for the rest of the line.
In Judaism, you need a minimum quorum of ten Jews to have official prayers. The Torah is so important, it's considered as counting for a whole Jew so you need only 9 if you have Torah scrolls.
Sure SOME folks are buried with bibles. However, when a Torah scroll is damaged beyond repair, the SCROLL ITSELF gets a full Jewish burial. Individual cemetery plot in a place of honor, a full headstone, a nice casket. Everyone shows up and mourns. It's a big honkin' deal and hugely expensive, but they are THAT important.
Anything less than this and a Torah is not considered kosher and may not be used in a synagogue. Yes, there are plenty of knock offs out there to buy that are machine printed, or not calligraphied appropriately, or whatever. But they're not real.
Please, I beg you, don't say a Torah is anything like a bible or that Torahs are treated like bibles are treated. Vandalism of Torah scrolls is a HUGE thing."
I saw this on facebook, and it’s important, but there are a few details that are off. Individuals can and do own Torah scrolls -it’s a big freaking deal, they’re massively expensive, and there’s little utility to it, but it’s still a thing. Congregations can, and often do, own more than one -being able to dedicate a Torah to a synagogue is a Big Deal (often done by or in honor of a couple who’ve been married several decades), and there are multiple occasions throughout the year when we read different bits from different scrolls.
To add some details about how important they are to us -if a Torah is dropped, the people who were there for it fast, if they are medically able to do so. I know multiple people who are fasting just because they saw the pictures from this -they’re... awful. When a Torah is out and naked, it is covered with a special blanket or a prayer shawl, and if the Torah is up or the ark is open, people stand out of respect and remain standing until the ark is closed and any Torahs that are out are in rest positions. Many traditions never fully unroll a scroll and only ever have it open to the segment being read. In others, a single scroll is opened once a year on our most joyous holy day in order to surround or cover the children with it. I have personally met many people who have risked their lives to run into a burning or flooding synagogue and bring the Torah scrolls out safely -we have no religious obligation to do so (rather the opposite, in fact), but that is the level of symbolic significance they have.
Normally I’d just hit reblog on a post like this and not add in the extra bits. But I felt I had to, because nine Torah scrolls were desecrated at the Nessah synagogue.
They were stripped of their coats and belts, torn from their cases, and spread out crumpled and smudged across the floor and chairs. Just from the photos, the damage to some of them is irreparable -a letter here or there can be scratched out and rewritten, or a sheet of parchment replaced, but the damage cannot be to one of the ineffable Names.
The photos of the broken glass are disappointing. The photos of the tallitot pulled down and scattered across the floor are upsetting. The photos of pages torn out of siddurim and scattered about like garbage are painful.
The photos of Torah scrolls pulled down and crumpled uncovered on the floor, their supports broken, are a violation. And to make the whole story even more heart-rending, the community in question was founded by Iranian Jews who fled religious persecution, and the attack took place over the sabbath -the holy day of peace and rest and study.
I also want to point out that counting a Torah as a person in a minyan...isn’t universal. And like talk to a rabbi before doing that if rabbinic opinion matters to you.
But all the rest, yes. And the persistence of the idea that you can count a Torah really means something.
[ID: A modified Marie Kondo meme. There are 5 panels, and she remarks “This one sparks joy.” about each of them. The panels are “aces that are sex repulsed”, “aces that are sex indifferent”, “aces that are sex favorable”, “aces whose repulsion/indifference/favorability to sex fluctuates”, and “aces who aren’t sure how they feel about sex”. End ID]
