Secret Codes Protect Ancient Torahs 679
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."
Non kosher torahs? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Non kosher torahs? (Score:2)
Not GPL compatable either. (Score:3, Funny)
Oh Well (Score:5, Funny)
high resolution photo (Score:2, Informative)
Re:high resolution photo (Score:4, Informative)
Re:high resolution photo (Score:3, Informative)
Photo Solution (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Oh Well (Score:3, Funny)
However (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:However (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:However (Score:3, Funny)
Man, someone is going to Hell for that one.
Re:However (Score:2)
Re:However (Score:3, Interesting)
Sort of.. the jewish idea of hell is more-or-less compatible with the Christian(catholic predominantly) idea of purgatory. Hell for the Jew is a tormented but temporary place for their souls, but not permanent/everlasting punishment for their "crimes" against God. Some will have to endure greatest punishment in the jewish "purgatory" but they will always be released. Their souls are to be "recycled" or reincarnated yet again until they reach perfection (another matter for di
Re:However (Score:3, Interesting)
In regards to *that* -
Re:However (Score:3, Funny)
sinner (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:However (Score:3, Interesting)
1. "Race" is not any sort of scientifically recognized term for subdividing within a species. So arguing that one thing is a "race" and another is not is ultimately a fruitless endevour...
[newsreel.org]
Re:However (Score:5, Informative)
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
Re:However (Score:2)
Re:However (Score:3, Interesting)
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)
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)
Re:However (Score:2)
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
Re:However (Score:2)
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)
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!
Re:However (Score:2)
Apparently, there is!
What is the Bible (Score:3, Informative)
And it's reasonably generalising to treat the Bible as one thing. It's a collection of books with a very varying style and purpose. There's everything from Jewish law (important for historical reference, nevermind other issues) to a Music book (most Christian hymns are derived from P
Bo-ring (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Bo-ring (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Bo-ring (Score:4, Funny)
Note: It's a joke. Laugh. I'm not Christian, Muslim, or Jewish; I'm just carrying this conversation to its logical conclusion.
Re:Bo-ring (Score:2)
Hail Eris
All Hail Discordia
Re:Bo-ring (Score:4, Funny)
How will it look like? (Score:3, Interesting)
Basic Cryptography (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Basic Cryptography (Score:2)
Re:Basic Cryptography (Score:2)
Re:Basic Cryptography (Score:2)
Re:Basic Cryptography (Score:2)
In any case, it's kind of a loaded question; the only religions that could satisfy the premise are those that have a tribal aspect. Are buddhists or muslims a "people"?
Re:Basic Cryptography (Score:2)
Re:Basic Cryptography (Score:2)
Did the Europeans who colonized the United States treat native americans like cattle for a couple centuries? Yup. I am ashamed of that part of our heritage. But the length of time pales in comparison to the jews.
Not trying to downplay anything. Both are examples of the ugly side of ma
Re:Basic Cryptography (Score:3, Interesting)
Try the Aztecs, they were wiped out to the point where no one is left to tell the story from their side.
Micro-perforation sounds like characters to me... (Score:2)
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)
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.
Well known to us Jews (Score:2)
Re:Related (Score:2)
Re:Related (Score:2)
It's like... ASCII Art in Calligula, instead of Lucida Console!
Only $50,000? (Score:2)
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)
Most Sifrei Torah (Torah Scrolls) are not particularly ancient, although scrolls which are a couple of hundred years old are quite common.
-David Barak
Re:Only $50,000? (Score:2)
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)
Re:Only $50,000? (Score:2)
-David Barak
Re:Only $50,000? (Score:2)
Oh, man. Wait 'til the **AA hears about this.
(Just wanted to make sure this discussion remained firmly in /. territory, and didn't go and get all serious and religious on everybody.)
E.
Compressed data in headers as added characters? (Score:2, Insightful)
Pardon my Ignorance (Score:2, Interesting)
What is considered an addition to the text? (Score:4, Interesting)
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'?
Re:What is considered an addition to the text? (Score:3, Insightful)
There are huge, hand-written scrolls. There's no inside cover, and, no, you can't buy them at the bookstore. They cost 50 grand new, for crying out loud!
-DMZ
Re:What is considered an addition to the text? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What is considered an addition to the text? (Score:5, Informative)
"Torah" means multiple things, thus the confusion.
1) = Pentatuch = Text of the 5 books of Moses
2) = "Teaching" or "Law" = the contents of all of Jewish Law
3) = shorthand for Sefer Torah = scroll containing (1) written on Parchament (skin of a kosher animal) by a Sofer (Jewish scribe) using special ink with the pieces of skin sewn together with Gid (sinew).
#3 is what TFA discusses. What you found in the bookstore is a bound copy of #1.
-David Barak
Re:What is considered an addition to the text? (Score:2)
Re:What is considered an addition to the text? (Score:2)
Perhaps instead of microdots they need to add a more specific admonishment. "Thou shalt not receive stolen goods, even if it is a Torah".
Nah. If they don't read the first, they won 't read the second, nor the microdots.
I think the Gideons have the right approach. Make'em cheap, make 'em available, and maybe, just maybe, somebody somewhere will
Re:What is considered an addition to the text? (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't get around religious doctrine on a technicality... you don't say to god "well you didn't say no hieroglyphs!" Besides these are rules these people willingly abide by, and their intent is to abide by the spirit of them. What is the point of following a religion if you just tear it to shreds because it isn't written in legalise?
Re:What is considered an addition to the text? (Score:2)
Re:What is considered an addition to the text? (Score:5, Interesting)
Reference 1 [chijewishnews.com] Reference 2 [jewishla.org]
Re:What is considered an addition to the text? (Score:3, Informative)
You don't get around religious doctrine on a technicality.
You realize that this is Judaism we're talking about, right? The religion that gave us the eruv [shamash.org] and the kosher for Passover rolls?Re:What is considered an addition to the text? (Score:3, Interesting)
You're incorrect. "Character" is generic, "letter" is not. As seen in "Chinese characters" [zhongwen.com]. The term "glyph" is equally generic.
Chinese characters aren't strictly pictograms or even ideograms. [answers.com] Some characters combinations of other characters where some parts of the compound character are used hint at the proper pronouciation.
Also not all words, are represente
Just like diamonds (Score:3, Interesting)
They should enlist Slashdot's help! (Score:2, Funny)
Uhhh...Amazon has them... (Score:2, Funny)
See! [amazon.com]
Jokes only Hebrew speaking Jews will get... (Score:5, Funny)
<bah-dum-ching!
"... and if they got away with it, they'd be getting Loot of the Frum!"
<boo hissss
Holes make a Torah unkosher (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Holes make a Torah unkosher (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe a little binary encoding by skipping some of the holes.
Re:Holes make a Torah unkosher (Score:5, Informative)
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)
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)
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.
Re:Holes make a Torah unkosher (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Holes make a Torah unkosher (Score:2)
Sell to whom? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sell to whom? (Score:3, Informative)
Oy! A young goy has broken the code (Score:3, Funny)
Not just ancient but any Torah (Score:3, Insightful)
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)
how about two?
Re:dictates that not one character can be added... (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:Only the Jews (Score:3, Informative)
Grouping all religions into one blanket statement is useless, as well. The evolve, just like organisms. And as we know, not all of anything "suck".
Even vacuums break at some point.
Re:Only the Jews (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Only the Jews (Score:2, Funny)
We'll work on spelling "troll" next article...
Re:Only the Jews (Score:3, Insightful)
"And the educated have always had more sex, money, power and influence."
I'm quite certain the uneducated have more sex. Those in the ruling classes always have more societal structures in place, that are aimed at *preventing* sex.
The money, power and influence parts, I won't argue with. But peasants definitely have more sex.
Re:Torah Identification (Score:4, Informative)
Besides, individual signatures added to ink wouldn't scale in any case.
-David Barak
Re:Torah Identification (Score:2)
RFID (Score:3, Informative)
-David Barak
Re:Amazing, two systems of justice... (Score:3, Interesting)
> What makes Jews so special?
Well... there's this I guess...
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/03/science/03gene.
Re:Amazing, two systems of justice... (Score:2)
Those masses of people do not contradict the claim that they are a minority. They are just well organized.
If everyone in New York would suddenly agree (as if they could agree) to protest it would be a crowd a couple orders of magnitude the size of those protests you are talking about. Yet it would still be a tiny minority of the US, much less the world.
Though I have no idea if they really are a minority. From the news I hear though
Re:Amazing, two systems of justice... (Score:2, Interesting)
For fuck's sake. To a palestinian, you are a foreign bastard who took his territory and gave it to the Jewish people, the same Jewish people he's in war and kills your people since you can remember. Of course they're shouting death.
And you know what's wrong with them, besides war crimes and unbelievable suffering and pain? Lack of perspective. Peace can't be achieved because most can't see any further than this.
So do you, as far as I can tell. Please, this people are not lunatics,
This Gentile says Mod Parent Down -1, Troll (Score:2, Informative)
--An 'If I Were a Rich Man'-singing " non-Jew.
Don't feed this troll, just mod them down, please.
Re:This Gentile says Mod Parent Down -1, Troll (Score:4, Funny)
> We all have a right to our opinion
Ah good.
My opinion is that you're an uneducated ass.
Re:OSS? (Score:4, Interesting)
Carved in stone (Score:2)
Re:As long as you don't change anything: (Score:2)
Not sure what they do with them once they steal it, though, cause they sure as hell aren't reading them.
Re:As long as you don't change anything: (Score:2)
Re:Quick! (Score:2)
The "original" Christians did it, the Catholics did it, the Mormons did it, the Christian Scientists did it..