Is the Jewish world ready to let machines take over the sacred work of the Jewish scribe? The simple answer is – maybe.
Rabbi Menachem Perl, director of the Zomet Institute, a high-tech nonprofit organization specializing in technological developments designed to meet halachic requirements, believes that the ancient custom is ready for a revolution, saying that introducing technology to this painstaking process will not undermine the holy books whatsoever.
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Jewish holy texts – Torah books, tefillin, mezuzot, and other religious writings – are traditionally transcribed by a sofer stam. Ritual scribes undergo rigorous training from another expert scribe, as their work involves not only intricate calligraphy but also a need to memorize thousands of laws that apply to the transcribing of religious texts written on parchment.
Even the slightest deviation from these rules renders these texts invalid for religious use. For this reason, this process has remained unchanged over the centuries.
Perl argues that past rabbinical decrees that have disqualified the use of technology to produce ritual texts have not addressed the innovations currently available. He further said that as the machines printing producing religious text would be supervised by a sofer stam their integrity would be maintained.
He further stressed that any references to God would still be introduced to the text manually, by a sofer stam.
Introducing robots to the transcribing of Jewish scrolls will also make the finished scrolls – sold for thousands of dollars each – significantly cheaper, he noted. This would allow smaller communities, which may not be affluent, to afford an ornate Torah scroll.
In 2014, a Torah-writing robot was developed by the German artists' group Robotlab and presented at Berlin's Jewish Museum. It was able to complete the 80-meter-long (260-foot) scroll in just under three months. A sofer stam usually needs about a year to complete a scroll.
