With great care and practiced, measured movements, Rabbi Naftaly Friedman takes up his custom-made turkey feather quill, dips it into a well of black kosher ink and slowly, from left to right, begins forming the Hebrew letters for a mezuza.
"All the lines have to start with specific letters," he says. "Anything that's missing, it's no good."
He unrolls another mezuza — a document containing 22 lines of biblical passages that is placed inside a box that is mounted on the door posts of Jewish homes — that has been damaged by water.
"This is still kosher," he says, gently unfurling the small piece of parchment. "The words are still there, so we try to make it beautiful."
Friedman's life for the past 20 years has been dedicated to doing just that and more. As a sofer — or Hebrew scribe — he reverently writes or restores mezuzot, Torahs and other holy documents so the important pieces of Jewish life are kept in kosher condition as the religion requires.
Friedman is one of a few hundred sofers in America and a handful in Rockland County.
Because as many as 11 laws govern the inion of some of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, great knowledge is required in order to properly perform the duties of a sofer.
The work is a combination of art, craft and ritual, steeped in the millenniums-old traditions. Part of the job requires Friedman frequently to perform detailed examinations of mezuzot and tefillin to ensure they are in order.
He displays a tiny Holocaust-era tefillin — a long, narrow strip of parchment upon which prayers are inscribed and that Jewish men wear on their bodies. The owners had brought it to him to be checked.
"They wanted to know if it's still kosher," he said.
A sofer's task is painstaking, and must be carried out solely by hand. Any mistake will render mezuzot and tefillin not kosher. Erasures are not permitted, and documents containing errors must be started from scratch.
Documents containing mistakes are buried in a cemetery near the resting place of a scholar, he said.
Even though the documents must be written by hand, scribes are extremely adept and mistakes are minimal, said Rabbi Chaim Z. Ehrenreich of Chabad Jewish Enrichment Center in Chestnut Ridge.
Ehrenreich has used Friedman's skills many times, including recently to restore a Holocaust-era Torah from Poland.
Friedman spent about eight hours a day for roughly four months rewriting the letters in the scroll, which was then checked by a special computer program that verifies accuracy.
The program revealed no mistakes, Ehrenreich said. Even if it had, Torah letters may be erased and rewritten without compromising a scroll's ritual correctness.
Ehrenreich marveled at Friedman's skill in restoring more than 300,000 letters by hand.
"I was very, very pleasantly surprised that there wasn't a single grammatic change ... it's very rare," Ehrenreich said. "Not one letter was wrong. Not one letter was off. That was amazing, that we had a perfect scroll."
It took Friedman about three years of private study to become a fully qualified sofer, although he says he has had the aptitude since he was a child in Brooklyn.
Friedman's work space consists of a drawing table with an overhead light and various artist's implements. The bookshelves on each of the small room's four walls are filled to capacity with religious texts, most of them in Hebrew.
As he sits at his work table inside his Monsey home, the phone rings. He answers, speaks quickly, hangs up and returns to work. He chats with his wife, Sharon, who is upstairs, while he prepares to examine another document.
The 53-year-old father of 11 — six sons and five daughters — said he is happy to use his talents to help Jews fulfill their religious obligations.
"It's the best thing I could do in life," he said, smiling. "Besides your livelihood, you help people with what they can't do themselves."
The presence of sofers such as Friedman is vital to the Jewish community because they maintain vital objects used in important daily rituals, Ehrenreich said.
"The scribe has a tremendous merit by enabling so many people to fulfill a mitzvah," or good deed, he said. "I have heard very, very powerful stories where people had one letter wrong in the mezuzas and something was wrong in the house ... and then when the mezuza was fixed and corrected, the issue at hand went away."
Friedman takes pleasure in most of his work, although some aspects are less joyful.
"I do all kinds of writings ... even Jewish divorces," he said, referring to the Jewish writ of divorce known as a "get." "It has to be in a specialized writing for each get. Whenever there is a Jewish divorce, I'm there, unfortunately."
The 12-line document is written on paper in the presence of a rabbi and the couple to be divorced, and very strict laws govern the process.
"That takes talent," Ehrenreich said, likening Friedman's involvement in the get process to that of a "court stenographer that writes calligraphy."
Always faithful to tradition, Friedman nevertheless allows some innovation in his work. For example, for commissions that require speed, he keeps a small blue Revlon hand-held hair dryer to quickly dry the ink on his work.
But some innovations will never encroach upon the venerable traditions of his calling, he said.
"This will never change," he said. "In fact, somebody wanted to come up with a stencil for the mezuza. It was very easy, but the rabbi said it was not kosher ... so it was banned."
Although Friedman has not taught his art to others, he might be inclined to teach the next generation, but his own sons don't appear to be among them.
"The sons, I don't see they have the hand for it. I don't see it. I don't see it," he said, with a slight smile and a philosophical shrug of the shoulders. "I don't know, maybe ... the grandchildren."
[בילד – נישט אפגעהיט]
"All the lines have to start with specific letters," he says. "Anything that's missing, it's no good."
He unrolls another mezuza — a document containing 22 lines of biblical passages that is placed inside a box that is mounted on the door posts of Jewish homes — that has been damaged by water.
"This is still kosher," he says, gently unfurling the small piece of parchment. "The words are still there, so we try to make it beautiful."
Friedman's life for the past 20 years has been dedicated to doing just that and more. As a sofer — or Hebrew scribe — he reverently writes or restores mezuzot, Torahs and other holy documents so the important pieces of Jewish life are kept in kosher condition as the religion requires.
Friedman is one of a few hundred sofers in America and a handful in Rockland County.
Because as many as 11 laws govern the inion of some of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, great knowledge is required in order to properly perform the duties of a sofer.
The work is a combination of art, craft and ritual, steeped in the millenniums-old traditions. Part of the job requires Friedman frequently to perform detailed examinations of mezuzot and tefillin to ensure they are in order.
He displays a tiny Holocaust-era tefillin — a long, narrow strip of parchment upon which prayers are inscribed and that Jewish men wear on their bodies. The owners had brought it to him to be checked.
"They wanted to know if it's still kosher," he said.
A sofer's task is painstaking, and must be carried out solely by hand. Any mistake will render mezuzot and tefillin not kosher. Erasures are not permitted, and documents containing errors must be started from scratch.
Documents containing mistakes are buried in a cemetery near the resting place of a scholar, he said.
Even though the documents must be written by hand, scribes are extremely adept and mistakes are minimal, said Rabbi Chaim Z. Ehrenreich of Chabad Jewish Enrichment Center in Chestnut Ridge.
Ehrenreich has used Friedman's skills many times, including recently to restore a Holocaust-era Torah from Poland.
Friedman spent about eight hours a day for roughly four months rewriting the letters in the scroll, which was then checked by a special computer program that verifies accuracy.
The program revealed no mistakes, Ehrenreich said. Even if it had, Torah letters may be erased and rewritten without compromising a scroll's ritual correctness.
Ehrenreich marveled at Friedman's skill in restoring more than 300,000 letters by hand.
"I was very, very pleasantly surprised that there wasn't a single grammatic change ... it's very rare," Ehrenreich said. "Not one letter was wrong. Not one letter was off. That was amazing, that we had a perfect scroll."
It took Friedman about three years of private study to become a fully qualified sofer, although he says he has had the aptitude since he was a child in Brooklyn.
Friedman's work space consists of a drawing table with an overhead light and various artist's implements. The bookshelves on each of the small room's four walls are filled to capacity with religious texts, most of them in Hebrew.
As he sits at his work table inside his Monsey home, the phone rings. He answers, speaks quickly, hangs up and returns to work. He chats with his wife, Sharon, who is upstairs, while he prepares to examine another document.
The 53-year-old father of 11 — six sons and five daughters — said he is happy to use his talents to help Jews fulfill their religious obligations.
"It's the best thing I could do in life," he said, smiling. "Besides your livelihood, you help people with what they can't do themselves."
The presence of sofers such as Friedman is vital to the Jewish community because they maintain vital objects used in important daily rituals, Ehrenreich said.
"The scribe has a tremendous merit by enabling so many people to fulfill a mitzvah," or good deed, he said. "I have heard very, very powerful stories where people had one letter wrong in the mezuzas and something was wrong in the house ... and then when the mezuza was fixed and corrected, the issue at hand went away."
Friedman takes pleasure in most of his work, although some aspects are less joyful.
"I do all kinds of writings ... even Jewish divorces," he said, referring to the Jewish writ of divorce known as a "get." "It has to be in a specialized writing for each get. Whenever there is a Jewish divorce, I'm there, unfortunately."
The 12-line document is written on paper in the presence of a rabbi and the couple to be divorced, and very strict laws govern the process.
"That takes talent," Ehrenreich said, likening Friedman's involvement in the get process to that of a "court stenographer that writes calligraphy."
Always faithful to tradition, Friedman nevertheless allows some innovation in his work. For example, for commissions that require speed, he keeps a small blue Revlon hand-held hair dryer to quickly dry the ink on his work.
But some innovations will never encroach upon the venerable traditions of his calling, he said.
"This will never change," he said. "In fact, somebody wanted to come up with a stencil for the mezuza. It was very easy, but the rabbi said it was not kosher ... so it was banned."
Although Friedman has not taught his art to others, he might be inclined to teach the next generation, but his own sons don't appear to be among them.
"The sons, I don't see they have the hand for it. I don't see it. I don't see it," he said, with a slight smile and a philosophical shrug of the shoulders. "I don't know, maybe ... the grandchildren."
[בילד – נישט אפגעהיט]