The Repair and Preservation of Old Sifrei Torah

The Repair and Preservation of Old Sifrei Torah

Machon Ot specializes in the restoration and preservation of old Sifrei Torah. This very delicate work consists of four stages.

Stage 1: Inspection

The Torah is checked from beginning to end to determine its physical and halachic status. Is the parchment dirty and/or damaged? Does the stitching need to be redone? Are the letters cracked? Has the color of the letters faded?  Based on the findings of this initial inspection a decision is made as to whether or not the Torah can be restored to its kosher status and if so, at what cost and over how long a period. During this initial inspection, a number of pages of the Torah are photographed so that we can register the Torah with its unique calligraphy in our international data base (now numbering over 16,000 Sifrei Torah), computer code it against theft and issue a Certificate of Ownership.

Stage 2: Restoration and preservation

Machon Ot has a department which specializes in the restoration, cleansing and preservation of the parchment. This is a process which makes use of a number of chemicals and other materials (all of which have been approved for their kosher status) and which will clean the parchment from any dirt and sediment and protect the letters from any further deterioration.

Stage 3: Repair of the damaged letters

The sofrim (scribes) of Machon Ot are now ready to repair letters that have deteriorated over a lengthy period of time. The principle which guides them in their painstaking letter-by-letter work is to respect the work of the original scribe who wrote the Torah in a different period of time and a different place in the world. The sofer thereby needs to adjust his own style of writing to that of the original scribe so that when the task is completed it will be virtually impossible to differentiate between what was written twenty or fifty or one hundred years ago somewhere else in the world to what is being written today in Jerusalem.

Stage 4: Quality Control

While each of our sofrim is an expert in his field, it is always good to have an “outside expert” review the work to be certain that nothing was overlooked. Our “outside expert” is a computer program.

When the sofer finishes his work we then photograph the entire Torah. Our unique computer program analyzes the pictures and indicates what, if anything, we need to look at one more time “just to be sure”. The sofer then does just that- he takes the computer report and revisits wherever the computer deemed necessary. Only when this final stage is completed can we restore the Torah to its kosher status and return it to its owner with the guarantee that Machon Ot stands behind its work.