A Torah scroll is written by hand, letter by letter
The TORAH is the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, and in a SYNAGOGUE it is read from a scroll that must be handwritten by a trained scribe, called a sofer, using a quill and special ink on parchment. A full scroll holds roughly 304,000 letters. Writing one takes about a year, and a single mistake that cannot be corrected means that section of parchment has to be replaced.
The scroll is kept in a cabinet called the ark and read from a raised platform, the BIMAH. A portion is read every week, and the whole Torah is completed in a yearly cycle, which ends and immediately starts again at a festival of dancing with the scrolls. Readers follow the text with a pointer, so that hands do not touch the parchment.
The day begins at sunset
In the Jewish calendar each day starts in the evening, following the words of Genesis — there was evening and there was morning. So SHABBAT, the day of rest, begins at sunset on Friday and ends when three stars are visible on Saturday night. It opens with candles, blessings and a family meal with CHALLAH, a braided loaf.
Jews believe God made a COVENANT, a binding agreement, with Abraham and later gave the law to MOSES. A MITZVAH is a commandment — traditionally there are 613 in the Torah — and bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah mean son and daughter of the commandment: the point, at thirteen for boys and twelve or thirteen for girls, when a young person becomes responsible for keeping them. KOSHER food follows those laws; one of them keeps meat and dairy apart, so an observant kitchen may have two sets of dishes.
Hebrew came back to life
For nearly two thousand years HEBREW was mainly a language of prayer and study rather than everyday speech. In the late nineteenth century Eliezer Ben-Yehuda set out to change that, raising his son to speak only Hebrew and inventing words for modern things the ancient language had never needed. Today it is spoken by around nine million people, most of them in ISRAEL — the only case of a language that had stopped being spoken at home becoming a national language again.
The TALMUD, a vast written record of rabbis discussing and debating the law over centuries, is studied in a mix of Hebrew and Aramaic. A RABBI is a teacher of Jewish law rather than a priest, and centuries of argument are preserved on the page, with disagreement treated as part of learning.
Festivals and symbols
PASSOVER remembers the escape from slavery in Egypt. At the SEDER meal the story is retold, and the youngest child asks four questions beginning with why this night is different from all other nights. MATZAH, flat unleavened bread, recalls leaving in too much of a hurry for dough to rise. The SHOFAR, a ram's horn, is blown at the Jewish New Year.
The rest of the grid holds the KIPPAH, the small cap many Jewish men wear as a sign of respect before God, the MENORAH, the DREIDEL and the STAR of David. Our Hanukkah page covers the festival where those last few come together. Around fifteen million Jewish people live worldwide today, most of them in Israel and the United States.