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the hardest part to learn is not the calligraphy even
though each sofer must write in exactly the same manner
as has been for thousands of years. The hard part is
remembering the thousands of laws that apply. For in
addition to the mezuzah the sofer stam will also copy
out the Torah scrolls, tefillin all the other texts that are
written on parchment including both marriage and
divorce papers. Tefellin, also known as phylacteries from
the Ancient Greek word meaning to guard or protect,
are the small black leather boxes containing parchment
scrolls inscribed with verses from the Torah that are tied
to the forehead and arm by observant Jewish men during
weekday morning prayers.
The mitzvah or commandment to fix a mezuzah to the
doorpost commemorates the time in ancient Egypt when
God commanded the Jewish people to mark their
doorposts with the blood of a lamb, an animal worshipped
by the Egyptians but used as a sacrifice by the Jewish
people. This would enable God when he brought the Tenth
Plague, the Killing of the First Born, upon the Egyptians
he could pass over the houses of the Jewish faithful –
hence the Jewish holiday Passover that celebrates the
long-ago Exodus from Egypt.
In the years between 1881 and 1914 there was a great
exodus of Jews from Eastern Europe fleeing from sudden
and very violent outbreaks of
ethnic-cleansing.
These
terrifying purges became known by the Jewish people as
pogroms from the Yiddish words for
like thunder
, po and
grom. Most of those fleeing for their lives wanted to go to
America and many hundreds of thousands stopped first in
London and for some 150,000 Jewish émigrés the East End
was to become home. London’s settled Jewish population of
Sephardi Jews from the Iberian peninsula feared that these
Ashkenazi newcomers with their Yiddish language and
strange garb might increase anti-Semitism in the capital.
England’s Chief Rabbi Nathan Marcus Adler sent letters
to East European rabbis describing the dire conditions for
arrivals in the East End. He wrote:
“There are many in Eastern Europe who believe all the
cobblestones of London are precious stones and that it is a
place of gold. Woe and alas, it is not so…. Warn them not
to come to Britain.”
The rabbi’s plea fell on deaf ears for people facing the stark
choice of a difficult life if they left or death if they stayed.
The hardships of England were as nothing compared to the
hardships of home. Thousands found work in the East End