Secular Israelis line up to write in a Torah scroll bound for Kibbutz Be’eri

On their way out of Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square Monday, Michal and Eran David pause to listen to a familiar sound. It’s a piyyut, a Jewish liturgical poem, being performed live inside a white PVC tent situated at the very rear of the half-deserted square.

The couple, secular Israelis in their sixties from Rishon Lezion, follows the sound into the tent, where they see singer Erez Lev-Ari singing next to an ultra-Orthodox man holding a white quill over a scroll of parchment as people wait in line to sit next to him. The man, David Avraham from Elad, is a sofer, a scribe who is adept at copying scripture, and the visitors are queuing up to each write one letter on the parchment as Avraham guides their hand.

The scroll is part of a commemoration project that began in 2014 following the abduction and murder by Hamas terrorists of three teenaged yeshiva students near Bethlehem. The unfinished Torah scroll has tens of thousands of letters, each representing a participant in the project led by Ayelet HaShahar, a religious Jewish organization that does outreach activities aimed at facilitating a greater sense of secular-religious fraternity.

Following the murder of 1,200 Israelis in Hamas’s October 7 onslaught from Gaza, Ayelet Hashachar now plans to lend the finished Torah Scroll indefinitely to Kibbutz Be’eri, one of the worst-hit Israeli communities that day.

David’s turn to write in the scroll coincides with the release earlier today of 11 Israeli hostages from Gaza, on the fourth day of a four-day truce deal that was approved for extension by two days.

Avraham sees parallels between the Torah scroll and the People of Israel. “Just like the Torah scroll is never whole if it misses even one letter, so is the Jewish People  never whole if it misses even one person,” says Avraham.