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Secret Codes Protect Ancient Torahs 679

Posted by timothy from the never-thought-about-that-before dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A story on Wired News reports the problems Jewish synagogues have protecting their Torahs from theft. The Torah scrolls, containing the five books of Moses, are hand lettered over the course of a year, are often hundreds of years old, and can sell for $50,000 or more. But Judaic law "dictates that not one character can be added to the 304,805 letters of the Torah's text", which makes them untraceable and easily sold on the black market. Rabbinic authorities have recently approved two computer-based systems to make the scrolls traceable: one takes a digital fingerprint of a Torah, a second makes microperforations in the parchment that yield a unique identifier."
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Secret Codes Protect Ancient Torahs More

Secret Codes Protect Ancient Torahs

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  • Non kosher torahs? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 06, 2005 @08:30PM (#12742008)
    Oy!

  • Oh Well (Score:5, Funny)

    by joeybagadonuts ( 849172 ) on Monday June 06, 2005 @08:30PM (#12742016)
    So much for looking for a signed copy...
    • Could you just take a really high resolution photograph of it? Doesn't everyone have different handwriting? Or are all of them meant to look the same?

      • Re:high resolution photo (Score:4, Informative)

        by neomac ( 97478 ) on Monday June 06, 2005 @11:21PM (#12743165) Homepage
        While each scribe, called a "sofer" (long o) has unique calligraphic penmanship, the form of the letters are highly detailed and specific to the calligraphy of writing a Torah. To go from one Torah to the next you would see no difference in the way each letter is formed.
        • I don't know about "no difference". Some sofers make nice even letters. Others start the line well enough but then buncheverythingup as they get to the end. Others realize they're going to get to the end of the line too quickly and stretch out some letters (which is allowed) to the point where they're hard to read. And on one torah I read from, the sofer went crazy with the crowns. We called that the 'trippy torah'. Here's a link to a sofer's site with lots of pictures and explanations: http://www.bayit0 [freeserve.co.uk]

      • Photo Solution (Score:3, Interesting)

        by SeanDuggan ( 732224 )
        Actually, if you RTFAed, one of the techniques listed does essentially that, albeit also analyzing the photo to determine handwriting style. The problem faced, apparently, is convincing the jury to consider this as true evidence that the two scrolls are the same. Handwriting analysis has been in courts (and public consciousness) long enough that people generally accept that you can show that a particular set of whorls and jots is characteristic of a particular author. Digital photographs... the precision in
    • I want the one autographed by moses!!

  • However (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MiKM ( 752717 ) on Monday June 06, 2005 @08:31PM (#12742022)
    It doesn't solve the problem of theft. If one is stolen, it might take years to recover it, if at all. Once it is recoevered, it isn't in pristine condition anymore. More attention should be focused on solving the problem itself than making it easier to apprehend the criminals.

    • Re:However (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 ) on Monday June 06, 2005 @08:36PM (#12742067) Homepage Journal
      I think the point is to help prospective buyers know if they are buying a "hot" item or not. If it can't be authenticated, or the seller is unwilling to authenticate it, then it makes it harder to sell.

      • Re:However (Score:3, Funny)

        by Glonoinha ( 587375 )
        A stolen bible?
        Man, someone is going to Hell for that one.
        • I was just spreading your word lord.

    • Re:However (Score:5, Informative)

      by Erwos ( 553607 ) on Monday June 06, 2005 @08:38PM (#12742088)
      "Once it is recoevered, it isn't in pristine condition anymore."

      Assuming we're only talking about problems from bad storage conditions, they're almost always fixable. Since fixing a Torah always cost less than writing a new one, this isn't as big a deal as you'd think. And, if they're going to sell the thing, you'd figure they're going to take at least a little care of it.

      Torahs "go bad" from everyday use. My family, for instance, has a sefer Torah that we have on loan to a local synagogue. Every so often, they find a letter that's chipped off a bit (the ink is the worst culprit), and it has to be taken and repaired. It's not a big deal.

      I think what I'm saying is, "pristine condition" is pretty unusual. Most synagogues will settle for
      just "kosher", and be happy with it.

      -Erwos
      • Definitely. Nothing worse than, on your Bar Miztvah, finding that the ink of a large portion of your parsha has blurred.

      • Re:However (Score:3, Interesting)

        by lawpoop ( 604919 )
        " Every so often, they find a letter that's chipped off a bit (the ink is the worst culprit), and it has to be taken and repaired.

        Can you enlighten me as to the type of ink this is that chips? Does it act more like a paint than a dye? What kind of material can a Torah be made of?

        • Re:However (Score:5, Informative)

          by thegameiam ( 671961 ) <thegameiam@noSPam.yahoo.com> on Monday June 06, 2005 @10:40PM (#12742911) Homepage
          " Every so often, they find a letter that's chipped off a bit (the ink is the worst culprit), and it has to be taken and repaired.

          Can you enlighten me as to the type of ink this is that chips? Does it act more like a paint than a dye? What kind of material can a Torah be made of?


          I can't tell you the composition of the ink ('cause I don't know it, it's not a secret or anything), but it does act more like a paint.

          The scolls themselves are made of sections of parchament, i.e skin from a kosher animal (cow, sheep, etc) which has been specially treated and scraped on one side. The Sofer (Scribe) has to draw lines to serve as letter guides, and then fill in the letters, in order, in a particular font called Ashirit (lit. "Assyrian," although the history of how that Hebrew font came to be called that is long and complicated).

          -David Barak

          • Re:However (Score:4, Informative)

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 06, 2005 @11:53PM (#12743377)
            Current inks used for the writing of Torah scrolls (as well as mezuzas and tefillin pachments) are made from a blend of ferrous sulfate and tannic acid, which react chemically to produce a black color, and a bonding agent (gum arabic). This type of chemical ink will eventually turn a reddish-brown or rusty color, which eventually invalidates the item for ritual use; this tends to occur after 100 years or more, depending on use and environmental conditions. Prior to the invention is chemical inks, sofrim (ritual scribes) used inks in which the black color was the product of carbon, blended with a bonding agent. Since carbon based inks are chemically stable, they do not suffer from discoloration; the very old Torahs (500+ years) which still exist are written in these inks. As chemicals inks are easier/cheaper to make and superior to write with, sofrim switched to them several hundred years ago (well after they had become the most popular inks for general use, probably around the 5th century).
    • It doesn't solve the problem of theft. If one is stolen, it might take years to recover it, if at all. Once it is recoevered, it isn't in pristine condition anymore.

      How are you going to pursuade a synagogue to buy a stolen Torah? It kind of goes against the purpose of the exercise.

      There are some private collectors but most of those are going to be observant.

      The point is not so much recovery as to ruin the market for stolen Torahs. An antique copy might be worth $50K but a stolen one is going to be

      • Because not every Torah is tracked, and a synagogue buying a Torah wouldn't specifically know that a Torah is stolen or not.

        For example, there are a number of Torahs recovered from Shtetls [thinkquest.org] long since wiped out through the Pograms or by the Nazis. My hometown synagogue has one such Torah.

        There is a family that goes to one of my relative's synagogues, and they helped save a Torah just before the Holocaust. Back in Europe just before it was too late (I don't remember which country) the Rabbi and some

    • Re:However (Score:5, Informative)

      by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Monday June 06, 2005 @09:15PM (#12742381) Homepage Journal
      If just a few people ID their scrolls, then yeah, it's only good for recovery. (And recovery is very very unlikely -- there's no Torah Police to go around inspecting everybody's scrolls.) But if these IDs become universal -- and they probably will, given the amount of money involved -- it will suddenly become very hard to fence an "hot" scroll.

      Pre-theft security and post-theft security are hardly mutually exclusive. People who own expensive gems do keep them under lock and key. But they also x-ray them, just in case. Up until now, synagogues have been limited to just one kind of security, while both are valuable.

      I'm a little suprised that no Slashdotter has commented on the irony of widespread theft of the book that's the original source for the "Thou Shalt Not Steal". Which would have allowed me to point out that the Christian Bible (of which the Jewish Torah is the first 5 parts) is the most widely shoplifted book!

      • And recovery is very very unlikely -- there's no Torah Police to go around inspecting everybody's scrolls.

        Apparently, there is!

        But experts say Torahs are stolen more often than you'd think. Geoffrey Haber, rabbi at Temple Emanu-El, learned the hard way in 1998, when a burglar swiped two scrolls from his synagogue in Englewood, New Jersey. They were recovered by an NYPD Torah-theft task force in a sting operation after the thief, a maintenance man working in the neighborhood, tried to sell the scrolls t

  • Bo-ring (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 06, 2005 @08:32PM (#12742027)
    Oy, these Rebbes today, so unimaginitive. Whatever happened to REAL anti-theft devices for holy artifacts, like the one on the Ark of the Covenant that melted your face off?

  • How will it look like? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DegeneratePR ( 889051 ) on Monday June 06, 2005 @08:33PM (#12742036)
    Anyone have an idea how the Torahprints will look like?

  • Basic Cryptography (Score:2, Insightful)

    by WAR-Ink ( 876414 )
    Braille MD5 sums. No doubt this idea was the Holy Grail of cryptography.

    But, a character is a character, whether it is holes punched in paper or pen and ink. I think this is cheating.

    Or perhaps this is just religious dogma getting in the way of the greatest idea in secruity codes since Leonidas scrapped off the wax.
    • Whether you believe it is the word of God or not, their "religious dogma" kept the jewish civilization alive, and the people united even after being forcibly removed from their homeland for centuries. How many civilizations can you say that about?

      • The Gaelic diaspora. Whilst the forced Clearances by sassanach sheep farmers reduced their native culture to a reflection of what it was, quite a few remained a coherent society when moved to such places as America, Canada, Australia.
    • I had the same thought. Micro-perforations are still a form of characters.

      Why not make some of the required Torah characters look slightly different in their appearance as a form of encoding? Seems like this would be easy to do and not violate the mandate of adding any characters.

      Unless that sounds like characters encoded into characters. Hmm. Somehow this is reminding me of The Nine Billion Names of God. [amazon.com]

  • Related (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pHatidic ( 163975 ) on Monday June 06, 2005 @08:36PM (#12742071)
    There is a tiny town in Israel, iirc called svadt, that has an artform called microcalligraphy which is not practiced anywhere else in the world. They are able to fit the entire Torah onto a single page, they they make the torah into a design.

    This is the first example [nishmati.co.il] that was found by Googling for microcalligraphy. I wonder if this technique could also be used on those works of art, which are extremely rare and expensive but also quite beautiful.

  • I'm surprised that's all their worth.

    I mean, aren't these old manuscripts we're talking about here? Or are these modern rewritings?

    Seems they could solve the problem by simply keeping them in a safe and using the buddy system, etc.

    • Re:Only $50,000? (Score:5, Informative)

      by thegameiam ( 671961 ) <thegameiam@noSPam.yahoo.com> on Monday June 06, 2005 @08:42PM (#12742129) Homepage
      The price represents about a year's labour for a Sofer (Jewish Scribe) and the cost of the parchament and ink itself. The cost of the materials is something like $5-10K, while the rest is the labour.

      Most Sifrei Torah (Torah Scrolls) are not particularly ancient, although scrolls which are a couple of hundred years old are quite common.

      -David Barak
      • At 300k characters and one year to produce, thats a bit over 1k per day (allowing one day off per week.) Even hand calligraphed, that isn't a lot.

        Are there rules saying certain bits have to be written on certain days? (Which would raise its own questions: can a scribe work on several copies at once? What if they're sick and can't write a bit on the appointed day?)

        Or is the calligraphy just a whole lot more challenging than I thought?

        • Re:Only $50,000? (Score:2, Informative)

          by cdwiegand ( 2267 )
          No, although of course no work on Shabbat (fri sundown to sat sundown), and many of the holidays, however, it takes a few years to really get down the art (not that I've done that, but I did look into becoming a Sofer at one point), and mistakes are bad (at the very least, they take time to scratch/shave off, and if you make a mistake in G-d's name, then that whole page is wasted and has to be specially buried). I mean, it takes a year, and you'd get bored real quick, and make mistakes. And I don't think it
  • If you consider the text of the Torah to be the body of a message being transmitted, then would not an included digital fingerprint or series of microperforations be additional data included in a header (in this case, for authentication purposes)? I know that a digital fingerprint or a series of microperforations are not precisely the same thing as adding more Hebrew characters to the body text of the Torah; but is it not conceptually possible to represent the pattern of data included in the fingerprint or

  • Pardon my Ignorance (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    But can't the identification be before the holy part so while on the same physical object are different things. The law is against the alteration of the law and not a name. The Christian Bible has the same warning, as does the Koran, and they both have ID in the beginnings that does not detract from the laws.

  • What is considered an addition to the text? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by magarity ( 164372 ) on Monday June 06, 2005 @08:38PM (#12742094)
    not one character can be added to the 304,805 letters of the Torah's text", which makes them untraceable and easily sold on the black market

    Just a few quick questions:

    Is putting some kind of ownership label on the inside cover really 'adding to the text'? I don't think anyone would mistake "From the Library of Hiram Goldstein" as part of the actual text. Can you buy a Torah at the bookstore? If so, does it have publisher's information? Further, 'character' is pretty specific to alphabetic writing. I wonder if a Chinese idiograph or Egyptian hieroglyph count as a 'character'?

  • Just like diamonds (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dr_dank ( 472072 ) on Monday June 06, 2005 @08:43PM (#12742139) Homepage Journal
    When I bought a diamond for an engagement ring, it came with a gemprint; a card showing the stones unique identifer when light is passed through it. No two diamonds are exactly the same, so light will not pass through two diamonds the same way. Very similar to what they're doing with the torah scrolls.
  • Contemplating stealing a holy text should lower the prospective thief's Karma enough that all you'd have to do would be to filter the entrance to the synagogue, yes? Easy enough to do on the forums!

  • ...for just $14.95. No Lie. I'm going to stock up!

    See! [amazon.com]

  • Jokes only Hebrew speaking Jews will get... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Avogadros Letter ( 867221 ) on Monday June 06, 2005 @08:56PM (#12742243)
    "Hey... at least now they'll have a Safer Torah!"

    <bah-dum-ching! />

    "... and if they got away with it, they'd be getting Loot of the Frum!"

    <boo hissss />
  • The very act of putting holes (however small) that are not used for binding pieces of parchment to the other ones, might render a Torah unfit for use! As an observant Jew, I'd be a little bit skeptical about reading from one...
    • How about tweaking the spacing of the holes used in the binding process?
      Maybe a little binary encoding by skipping some of the holes.

    • Re:Holes make a Torah unkosher (Score:5, Informative)

      by thegameiam ( 671961 ) <thegameiam@noSPam.yahoo.com> on Monday June 06, 2005 @10:26PM (#12742838) Homepage
      The halakha (Jewish Law) works like this - the text must be readable, and printed correctly. There can't be any holes inside the margins; however, holes or tears outside the margins are parmitted, although they're not mehudar (nice).

      My synagogue, Kesher Israel [kesher.org] has one particular Sefer Torah which has about a 2" tear over one of the columns at about Parshat Pinhas (Numbers 25:10 - 30:1), which is quite apparent every time we read it - it'd be quite hard to fix, so we're waiting until we can take that one out of circulation for a few months...

      -David Barak

    • Re:Holes make a Torah unkosher (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ScentCone ( 795499 ) on Monday June 06, 2005 @10:55PM (#12743015)
      As an observant Jew, I'd be a little bit skeptical about reading from one...

      OK, so I'm entirely too Scando-Anglo in my heritage (considering the topic), and specifically not religious... so this will seem, well, cheeky (at best).

      How does any modification to the physical nature of the book/scroll, other than a change that actually alters the words therein, change the message? Meaning, Shakespeare is still Shakespeare whether in paperback, parchement, or HTML. Aren't the (apparently never changing) 300k-some characters in the Torah, well, the same every time? I understand that handling a carefully loved artifact can help put on into an introspective mood, but surely one with invisible changes (microscopic holes) isn't damaging to your spirituality - isn't content king, as it were?

      Now, all that being said, how about high-res digital images of a few of the pages? If they're hand made, no two are exactly the same, and matching a high-contrast calligraphic image against a database would surely be no harder than matching digitized finger prints, right?

      Anyway, I guess I'm just scratching my head about the "unfit for use" part. Surely the things Moses said and did, for example, aren't any different if the very same words telling the story are on a piece of paper with microscopic holes you can't even see? And, aren't whatever cultural and contemporary spiritual lessons one is supposed to glean from reading those words what really matter? I'd always thougth that "observant Jews" (as you put it) would be more about the message than the medium. But then, I suppose this is really a larger-scale, lukewarm semi-rant about orthodoxy and dogma in general - no need to pick on any particular flavor, but I saw your comment and thus you win my rant-prize for the evening.

      • Re:Holes make a Torah unkosher (Score:4, Informative)

        by Zachary Kessin ( 1372 ) <zkessin@gmail.com> on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @01:43AM (#12744059) Homepage Journal
        The laws of writting a kosher Torah are quite complex. For example with 6 exceptions each page must begin with a specific letter "Vav".

        There are complex laws for how a Torah is written, read etc. If you drop one of the floor everyone in the room is required to fast for 40 days (generally Monday and Thursday for the next 20 weeks). This is an object for us that is increadably special to us.

        I should point out that most Jews I know also own at least one printed version with commentary etc. In my case its a Hebrew/English translation but as I live in Israel many folks have a Hebrew only version.

  • Sell to whom? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Locke2005 ( 849178 ) on Monday June 06, 2005 @09:12PM (#12742358)
    Who would pay $50,000 for a stolen Torah? Surely somebody that would place that much value on a book would actually have read the book and be attempting to follow the laws therein, especially the one about "Thou shalt not steal" -- or encourage others to steal! I can't beleive people could buy this without the provence of them documented, and then claim they just didn't know it was stolen.

    • Re:Sell to whom? (Score:3, Informative)

      by CmdrGravy ( 645153 )
      I would guess that the thief uses an especially dastardly and cunning ruse, something along the lines of avoiding saying "Would you like to buy this stolen Torah" and saying something like "My client has a Torah for sale" instead.

  • Not just ancient but any Torah (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gelfling ( 6534 ) on Monday June 06, 2005 @10:33PM (#12742872) Homepage Journal
    $50,000 or more is for a Torah that is used every day. A truly ancient e.g. more than 5 or 6 hundred years old scroll or a Torah from eastern Europe before 1800 would literally be priceless. Pick a large number, double it, add 4 zeros, double it again.

    Theft is not a huge problem but it is a problem because scrolls are so expensive and some shuls simply can't afford them. So they look for one of questionable provenance. Also scrolls do wear out and have to be buried and replaced eventually.

  • dictates that not one character can be added... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Kiyooka ( 738862 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2005 @01:17AM (#12743920)
    "...dictates that not one character can be added to the 304,805 letters of the Torah's text..."

    how about two? :)
    • how about two? :)

      I know you meant that as a joke, but I really have to wonder how the use of "microperforated parchment" counts as magically less of a violation of the rule than your own suggestion.

      If you take it literally, then your own suggestion would work just fine. If you interpret it to mean "don't add any more information", the suggested fix violates the rule just as much. If we allow something in between the two, it seems silly to need to resort to microperformations - Why not a plain ol' wat

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