“John was just 18 years old when he died; he left no footprint on earth,” says Kevin Collins of Sydney, one of the first people to dedicate a letter to a lost loved one on Sefaria’s Digital Global Community Torah. “I began to seek out ways to create a footprint for him. When I learned about the Global Community Torah, I knew I wanted to add a letter in his name. With God’s help, I decided to dedicate a shin to John, as this is the letter commonly seen on the mezuzah. To me, the fact that the mezuzah contains the words of the Shema creates a connection between John’s footprint on earth and his nefesh (soul) in the heavens above.”
Sefaria, the nonprofit organization that digitizes and freely shares Jewish texts in Hebrew and translation, launched its Global Community Torah digital collaboration as part of its 10th anniversary last year. The project enables anyone to have a small part in “writing” a Torah, and already, nearly 12,000 people have left their mark as digital scribes. But Sefaria didn’t anticipate that people would look to the project as a way to celebrate momentous occasions and find comfort in moments of strife.
“We never thought that people would memorialize or look to help others heal through this project,” says Chava Tzemach, Sefaria’s director of marketing and communications who is leading the Global Community Torah Project. “We also have people dedicating letters to simchas like b’nai mitzvah, graduations, and marriage. I think that’s what makes this so special—it bubbled up from our users in such an authentic, organic way. Once people started doing this on their own, we knew we needed to make it easier and even more meaningful for others to do the same.”
Other users find resonance in this new feature as well as posts on the site show:
“Thank you for this way to honor my beloved husband,” Gail Shapiro, New York
“Oh, this is wonderful! Thank you so very much! This person is in the hospital recovering from cancer right now and this will really mean a lot to him,” Rena Lior, Sweden
Originally from Boulder, Colo., Tzemach is a traveler at heart—both in the geographical and spiritual sense of the word. Her innate curiosity has taken her down various career paths and locales, always searching for new things to learn. Once a circus performer and teacher, she also spent time as an environmental educator for a Jewish day school program and as a marketing consultant for various Israeli and North American nonprofits.
To hear Tzemach tell it, it was Sefaria’s dedication to making Jewish texts as accessible as possible that drew her to the organization. “It’s so important, especially when you think about all the reasons people might not have access to [Jewish texts],” she says. “Maybe they live far away from other Jews or have an identity that’s historically been denied access to the kind of learning that has so inspired me in my life. I, myself, was told I couldn’t learn Talmud because I’m a woman during my time at seminary. With Sefaria, no one can be denied access to these texts—they belong to all of us.”
In 2020, amid mass closures and increasing isolation, Tzemach began to imagine what it would look like to create a collective art piece reflecting the connections between Jews around the world. “I asked myself what a Sefaria exhibit in a Jewish museum might look like,” she says, “And, for me, anything we made would have to be interactive, about taking ownership over our collective heritage.”
She and others drew inspiration from Jewish texts as they considered what to make. They noted that the 12th-century scholar Ibn Ezra interprets the final commandment in the Torah (from Deuteronomy 31:19) as an instruction for each and every Jew to write a Torah because every Jew has a stake in the tradition, and thought about how, according to the Talmud, a Torah scroll is deemed unfit for use if even one letter is missing. Tzemach took all this and synthesized it into the massive worldwide project, the first-ever digital Torah scroll written letter-by-letter by Jews the world over. To date, 134 countries are represented by the digital “scribes” who are writing this one-of-a-kind Torah.
Anyone, anywhere in the world can participate at torah.sefaria.org. Users first learn about different Hebrew typefaces and select their font before “making their mark” by entering their first name and location (or the name of the person they’re honoring). They then receive emails with a graphic of the Torah verse containing their letter and information about the parashah, or weekly reading, of the Torah in which the verse appears. Those being honored also receive an email that can contain a special message from the “scribe.” For those who passed away, the scribe can have a notification sent to someone else about the letter.
Users can also spin the digital globe to see the locations of other Global Community Torah contributors, showing the geographical diversity of the participants, and read the entire digital scroll when completed. Hovering above each letter displays the names of their fellow digital “scribes” and those memorialized or honored.
“I cannot fully explain the comfort I have gotten and continue to get from that letter,” adds Collins. “John David Collins lived here for a short while. He has a letter shin [in the Torah] and a star for his footprint in the heavens above, and a plaque and brick and gravestone for his footprint on earth.”
The various historical fonts available to Digital Scribes symbolize the vast history of the global Jewish community. In Jewish law, if one letter of the Torah is missing or written incorrectly, the entire scroll is unusable. So, the “Global Community Torah” requires that hundreds of thousands of people work in concert to “write” each letter and complete the project.
