In LA

Or at least, they will be able to unite soon when at least one more Jewish woman becomes a traditional scribe to join Vancouver’s Aviel Barclay in her career path. According to this article at Forward (a journal from New York founded in 1897 and published in English, Russian, and Yiddish!), Aviel is the only soferet (traditional scribe) at the moment, but there’s at least one more soferet in training in New York.

“Black Berry Sheet” © copyright A. Barclay

A bit of explanation about sofrim (scribes) and some historical background is in order: There are many ritual objects used in the practice of Judaism, from Torah scrolls to marriage contracts (ketubim) to tefillin and mezuzot, that require the work of a scribe. There are all sorts of rabbinic laws and traditions relating to the exact shape of the hebrew letters in such inscriptions, and it’s a profession requiring a large amount of technical skill (certain kinds of mistakes in writing a Torah scroll require starting the section over), halachic (Jewish law) knowledge, and a good aesthetic sensibility. Traditionally, sofrim have been male, and many orthodox would argue that this is the way it should be for a variety of reasons. There’s a heated halachic debate on this issue within the orthodox community.

So this makes Aviel Barclay’s situation very unique. I stumbled across her blog/diary and webpage today. Some of her ketubim (marriage contracts) look very nice, and she is writing an entire torah for a congregation in Seattle. She also writes amulets and teaches the kabbalah of the letters.

Aviel is very traditional and thus looks within the rabbinic tradition for her responses to critics and to inform her own thoughts and rationalizations. I mention this to explain some of the rather technical-sounding halachic language and logic in her posts. You may need a hebrew and aramaic dictionary to get through some of those posts with the meaning intact, but the photos of her work scattered through her blog need no translation.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 29th, 2005 at 11:39 pm and is filed under Judaic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.