This year marks a special milestone for West End Synagogue. For the past 150 years, congregation has served as the spiritual home for Middle Tennessee’s Conservative Jewish community. To mark the anniversary, several events and celebrations are planned, including the addition of a new Torah scroll. The project will kick off on January 25th, when the scribe (sofer), Rabbi Gustavo Surazski, will be visiting Nashville from Israel to start writing. Rabbi Joshua Kullock, the congregation’s rabbi, says, “It’s meaningful that the Torah will be written in the South of Israel in the post-October 7th world, and shows our commitment to life and continuity.”
The project is expected to take most of 2026, but Rabbi Kullock says, “It will begin formally as a congregation with the writing of Bereshit (the book of Genesis) in front of everybody.” The morning will include some special activities with the students at Beit Miriam religious school. “We want to showcase the school we are so proud of and this will be the Torah that all of these kids will read for their Bar or Bat Mitzvahs.”
The writing of a Torah is itself a spiritual task, one that requires special skill and dedication. “The beautiful thing about this is we are engaging a specific human being, a specific scribe, who will be tasked with writing a Torah that is from the very beginning, meant to be for us.” He says that while every Torah has the same letters, this one is written with the congregation in the mind of the scribe.
There are rituals surrounding the writing of a Torah. “The sofer goes to the mikveh as he is writing. It’s a spiritual process. Every time he sits down, there is a blessing that he will say. A kavanah, or intention so that he is focused on writing,” says Kullock.
Torahs are still written by hand, on parchment, using a quill in the style of calligraphy. The process is exacting and has specific requirements, leaving little room for individual artistic style. “We are moving into more and more of a standardized version of the Torah, which means it follows a pattern.
There are a few different ways of writing in terms of the amount of words you write per column.” He says while the congregation has older Torahs with some variations, in today’s world, the practice has more specific patterns. And in today’s modern world, the finished product will be scanned to search for any corrections that need to be made before it is shipped to its destination.
The scribe spends many hours alone writing and in the case of Rabbi Surazski, he will use an architect’s type of table with light underneath, and an overhead projector to help him make the letters uniform. Asked about mistakes, Kullock says the ink can be scrubbed and rewritten, except in the instance of writing God’s name. “If you write God’s name wrong, you will have to bury that parchment because you cannot erase it.”
The Torah kickoff event is just the beginning of the yearlong celebration of the synagogue. Kullock says it is a very meaningful way to being. “This is a once in a generation event.” And even more meaningful that the two rabbis have known each other for decades. “We have known each other for a long, long time. He wrote my Ketuba. I am happy to have him do this work.”
For more information about the kickoff event, and any other questions, visit www.westendsyn.org.####...#####
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