Restoring a Torah Scroll
by Rabbi Paul Golomb

Old books are hard to preserve. The binding cracks, pages yellow and then become brittle, the print smudges. If you want to keep an old book for a very long time, the best thing to do is put it in a climate- and humidity-controlled location, and use it as infrequently as possible.
Torah scrolls are supposed to last a very long time - two hundred years or more - but they are also supposed to be used on a regular basis. Arks are opened frequently so climate controls are not very practical. The solution for preserving a Torah is regular maintenance.
Every 7-10 years a scroll should be carefully checked and repaired. This procedure involves cleaning discolored sections (the ink inevitably smudges as it is pressed in the roll of the parchment), scraping away faded and blurred letters and then rewriting them in a sharp and clean fashion, and occasionally reattaching the pages that make up the scroll.
The effort is not that different from what one does in order to maintain a house with repainting, a new roof or heating system, and so forth. Indeed, the Torah scroll is a sort of house, in which the history, principles and dreams of a people reside.
This year, we at Vassar Temple are celebrating the restoration of our Torah scrolls and we would like you to be a part of this unique experience.