The Women’s Torah Project Torah as an Experimental Book

The Jewish Torah scroll is a hand-scribed version of the Hebrew Ten Commandments and the first five books of the Hebrew Bible (the Pentateuch). Making a kosher Torah scroll that is fit for ritual use is, however, typically believed to be prohibited for women. I contend that this is due to the belief in traditional Judaism that women’s bodies are preternaturally impure. In this talk, I use the Women’s Torah Project Torah (2010)—the first Torah written by an international community of women—to re-evaluate the question “What makes a book experimental?” The Torah scribing process entails a highly scripted and embodied performative design ritual that plays out among scribe, materials—such as parchment, ink, letterforms, and scribing tools—and sacred biblical texts. Adherence to the regulations for how scribes should prepare themselves bodily and mentally, as well as to the hundreds of rules for how to produce parchment, layout pages, draw letters, and correct mistakes, is what defines a kosher Torah. Because following this set process accurately is so crucial, experimentation is forbidden. One could therefore claim that a finished Torah is the opposite of an experimental book. However, how do we define a book object that doesn’t look experimental when the embodied process made by it is rule-breaking? When an embodied-making process is prohibited for women, what effect does the transgressive act of female makers—such as those who participated in the Women’s Torah Project—have on the experimentality of a book object?