Behind the Parchment
the work of a female scribe
According to traditional Jewish law, a woman may not write sacred text.
There is no school for women who want to become scribes.
We learn from the few men scribes who will teach us, and we teach each other.
The original photographs and poems in this collection are a snapshot
of the physical and emotional labor entailed in scribing sacred text
as a woman and as a mother.
In Her Hands
Notes from a Soferet
I dunk my body in an inkwell of water
ready my hands, my heart, my lips
to speak words my ancestors
spoke, wrote, passed, told,
buried.
At home, in the dark,
intention pours out like easy rain
and the quill - cut and ready - dips in
gathers close, holds tight.
Exhalation is whispering the words I will write
scratch of the quill on animal skin turned parchment
the low hum of the light – nothing more.
They forgot to tell us to keep our shoulders down
to keep our hair pinned back
to keep our bracelets off to the side
to make sure the babies were fast asleep before we wrote.
But I will not sign this work,
each scroll a mystery of inheritance.
Who wrote with a purple quill?
Who wrote with bellies full of babes, with breasts begging for release?
Who wrote hidden, who made their own ink, stretched their own hides?
Who passed on in hushed delivery?
In the studio, I rebel,
paint and write with what should not be ink
carve out letters, beg their emergence
impregnate Torah with my own birthing.
Back at the mikveh,
blue waters hold secrets
white space around black words, too:
processed skin, hair lines and splotches of color from a doe
echo our voices and our bodies
tuck us quietly into the telling.
Exodus
By the waters they waited,
babies on hips.
They knew —
before the rod and the staff
before the waters trembled —
they knew
when the parting would come.
Not With You Alone
וְלֹ֥א אִתְּכֶ֖ם לְבַדְּכֶ֑ם אָנֹכִ֗י כֹּרֵת֙ אֶת־הַבְּרִ֣ית הַזֹּ֔את וְאֶת־הָאָלָ֖ה הַזֹּֽאת׃
I make this covenant, with its sanctions, not with you alone
(Deuteronomy 29:13)
I sit in an empty sanctuary,
timeless scroll at my palms
and start with erasure —
scraping, rubbing, burnishing.
Like my stomach,
the skin can never be re-flattened.
Like my marks,
the parchment bears the weight
of carrying,
streaked with stretching.
Ancestry and inheritance
are my belly pushing against the table,
teeny tiny feet
asking for a turn
with the quill.
erasure
i stand up and my
legs are coated,
dust of Poland
on my thighs.
repair
and when this scroll
is kosher no more
not because of the hand that mended its seams
but because time bore her truth
on timeless letters,
grandfathers’ tales will
cradle the eyelash
i watched fall onto the top of the stitching
which I covered with a patch
between two panels.
my body will go down with this scroll,
my name
not erased.