Torah Writing
Linda B. Coppleson is a Conservative, egalitarian, Jewish ritual scribe, teacher and Judaic artist.
Learning “sofrut”
Learning to be a scribe evolved from the creation of numerous ketubot and Judaic artwork, in combination with years of teaching Torah. It is because I love both the act of writing Hebrew letters and teaching that I embarked on the journey to be a soferet. The challenges of finding a sofer willing to teach a woman and the obstacles to practicing the craft were evident. Nevertheless, the goal filled a missing area of my life as a Jew. It was never my goal to make a feminist statement, however, as a Jew and an artist, I was inexorably drawn to this ancient art.
Scribal Work
As part of a small, international community of women scribes, I completed the writing of the first sefer Torah commissioned entirely for sofrot. My participation in the Women’s Torah Project afforded me the honor of writing twenty of the sixty-two four column pages which comprise every Torah, including the entire book of Numbers, the last two parshiot of the Torah (Ha’azinu and V’zot haBracha) as well as several columns in the book of Leviticus. Upon completion, I traveled to Seattle, WA, where the Torah now resides, for the sewing together and dedication of the scroll. As a result of this commission I am recognized as a Soferet STaM, qualified to write Torah scrolls, tefillin and mezuzot.
