LITTLE ROCK — At the Chabad-Lubavitch of Arkansas Center for Jewish Life, it will soon be time to dance.
The occasion will be the unveiling Sunday of a new Torah scroll, created just for Little Rock-area Jews.
Rabbi Pinchus Ciment envisions the ceremony unfolding "in a harmonious and unified environment."
"Let's show how the Torah is meant to bring peace into the world," said Ciment, who has invited the city's three Jewish congregations to come together to celebrate.
The Torah, the first five books of the Bible, has united the Jewish people for thousands of years, since, according to tradition, God revealed the Scripture to Moses on Mount Sinai, and Moses brought the Torah to the Jewish people at the foot of the mountain.
Ciment and other Orthodox Jews believe that the exact words and lettering of the Torah have been passeddown from generation to generation since that time.
Although the center has two other Torah scrolls from which weekly lessons are read, this is the first one that was started in Little Rock and will be completed here.
The painstaking process of using a quill to precisely transcribe each of the Torah's 304,805 letters began at the center in December.
Since then, Rabbi Shmuel Klein of New York, a trained fourth-generation scribe, has spent the last eight months, generally working four to six hours a day, on the project. While most of the work has been done at his home in Brooklyn, Klein also has traveled with the scroll to Israel "for added holiness," Ciment said.
The Scriptures are transcribed onto delicate parchment made from the skin of ritually slaughtered animals - typically cows.
Ciment wasn't sure how Klein protected the document, whichweighs about 30 pounds and whose sections are sewn together by barely noticeable animal hairs, on his travels. But when the scroll is unfurled in Little Rock by its ornamental silver holders and placed on a stationary podium - much like the type used to hold giant dictionaries - its final few verses will be completed by a master scribe who was not only Klein's teacher but is also his father, Rabbi Moshe Klein.
The elder Klein will closely guide members of the local Jewish community who desire to inscribe a letter in the Torah.
Ciment said those who have written him a letter asking to participate will be given the opportunity to help complete the book. Errors aren't allowed. Under Jewish law, the text must be destroyed if marred by so much as a single smudge, tear or stray mark.
That strictness is a reminder that, just as there are no insignificant marks on the Torah, there are no insignificant people in a community, Ciment said.
The opportunity to inscribe a letter will begin at 11 a.m., and the elder Klein is scheduled to begin adding the final letters at noon. Visitors may then acknowledge the scroll by touching it or giving it a kiss - through a covering.
Ciment described the ceremony "as a mini-reenactment of the Sinai experience."
Since the Torah is metaphorically used as the marriage document between God and the people, Ciment said, "Many of the symbolisms in the ceremony will be like a marriage ceremony," including the fact that it will be held under a canopy, that the Torah will be encircled seven times, and that there will be "joyous dancing" and a formal luncheon.
The celebration will include a procession that, weather permitting, will lead outside.
A portion of the Torah will be dedicated to the memory of the Jews murdered at the Chabad House in Bombay, India, in November, in keeping with the principle of "banishing evil with increased goodness," he said.
The project's initiation, he said, came at an "opportune time" to "show how the Torah's meant to bring peace into the world," and to emphasize that "This is a world for all human beings."
Ciment initiated the project as a way to bring together and give "renewed energy" to the state's diverse and sometimes fragmented Jewish community, which is estimated at roughly 1,600 people. In Little Rock, it includes a Reform congregation at Temple B'nai Israel and a traditional congregation at Agudath Achim.
Ciment hopes that B'nai Israel and Agudath Achim members will attend in large numbers and be a significant part of what he expects to be an "overflow crowd."
"Something like this on a Sunday, it's really for the whole [Jewish] community," said Rabbi Gene Levy of Temple B'nai Israel.
The project got a boost from a donation by the family of the late Bob Itzkowitz, who helped build Arkansas' Jewish community and died in 2000. Levy noted that Itzkowitz "had roots in all three congregations," and that alone is likely to attract many in the Jewish community.
The completion of the Torah scroll coincides with the winding down of the Jewish year. Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year, on the evening of Sept. 18.
The Torah is designed to be read completely in a year's time through weekly lessons. Readings from the new scroll will begin after the Jewish holidays, as millions of Jews worldwide simultaneously turn to the same sections from other - yet identical - scrolls.
Religion, Pages 14, 15 on 08/29/2009