african koran, loose-leaf & leatherbound, and painfully beautiful script — best viewed large, I think.
o why do they not make books like this anymore?
the Haftarah: selections from the Hebrew Bible (Tanach) to be read on the Sabbath. I fear the synagogues no longer read from ancient vellum scrolls, though I wish to be wrong about this.
please let there have been a lilliputian library to go along with this book
You are indeed wrong. They aren’t necessarily old, but they are still individually scribed on parchment. Any mistakes made during this process render the Torah invalid, and the scribe must start again from scratch.
HURRAH
Just to add to Simon’s comment above; Torah scrolls are hand-scribed on parchment, and they are still written and stored as scrolls, not codices.
Just to jump on the bandwagon (information cascade, wooooo), yes, Torah scrolls are read and used pretty much as they’ve always been in most synagogues. Not sure how Reform do things though.
Interesting avenue of research. I’d consult my Jewish friends, but they know less about Judaism than I do.