This summer, I unpacked a box containing the full set of parchment I need to write a new Sefer Torah. I unrolled and layed out 62 panels, making up 245 columns of Torah to be written with feather and ink. The sheets were “blank,” save for the guidelines ruled with an awl. Holding all of those bare yeriot (panels), an ancient rabbinic teaching burned in my hands. “Rabbi Phinchas taught in the name of Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish: The Torah, which God gave to Moses, was white fire engraved in black fire. It was fire mixed with fire … ” (Jerusalem Talmud, Shekalim 6:1).

Most of the time, when we encounter the physical Torah scroll, we are drawn to the black fire — the rich, formed, beautiful, dark letters that dance their way across the page. This fire contains stories and teachings we have read, passed on, and written over and over for generation after generation without changing even a letter. But underneath and all around those ancient letters burns a white fire — the physical, spacious foundation for the stories we hold dear.
As a Torah scribe, I certainly spend a lot of time focused on the black fire of the letters, taking care to form each one properly and order each word, each line just as it is written in my guide. But the laws of scribing mandate diligence and respect for the blank space, too. Each and every letter must be separated by parchment on all four sides (Mishneh Torah, Tefillin, Mezuzah and the Torah Scroll 1:19). So I also pay a lot of attention to the “blank” space, and I am deeply dependent on its tactile particularities. If the parchment is too smooth, the ink is blobby. If the parchment is too rough, the feather will catch, and the lettering will become jagged or fuzzy. If the parchment is sanded just right, the sharpness of the quill carries ancient words boldly and confidently to a new home. In the studio, with a dipped quill in my hand, the white fire burns steadily. It stands between and around every letter and word, traces columns and marks the wide edges of each page. And, it burns with stories beyond those that are written.

For many mystics and Hasidim, the black fire corresponds with Torah sh’bichtav (the Written Torah, comprised of the Five Books of Moses, the Prophets and the Writings), while the white fire corresponds to Torah sh’ba’al peh (the Oral Torah, comprised of rabbinic teachings that expound and expand on the Written Torah). In the rabbinic period, after the destruction of the Second Temple, the rabbis began a great, extensive project of writing down the stories they had passed on, inherited and taught into what would become the Talmud (Mishnah and Gemara). According to tradition, the white fire is home to those vast teachings, held quietly and humbly in the blank spaces around the letters of Bereshit (Genesis), Shemot (Exodus), Vayikra (Leviticus), Bamidbar (Numbers) and Devarim (Deuteronomy). The white fire, the still bare parchment, symbolizes our tradition’s commitment to the project of imagining beyond what is immediately apparent.
Eighteenth-century scholar and thinker Moshe Chaim Ephraim of Sudilkov, a grandson of the Baal Shem Tov, taught: The Torah is being interpreted in every generation according to the needs of that generation (Degel Machaneh Ephraim, Bereshit 15, translation by Rabbi Abby Stein). The blank parchment left as so around the letters is an ongoing invitation for us to interpret, to imagine and re-imagine, to ponder and ask, to exchange ideas and bring new insight into conversation with what we have inherited.
And, beyond the interpretative work represented by the white fire, each and every Torah scroll carries forward a record of the hands that wrote, touched, rolled, repaired, pointed at while reading, dressed and danced with the scroll. I like to imagine that record as part of the white fire, too — kept and passed on in the “blank” spaces. The scroll I am writing carries forward the story of a woman who scribed with a pregnant belly pushing up against the table. It carries the hand of congregants who helped to write the opening words of Bereshit at the beginning of the scroll. It carries the vibrations from the singing and dancing that encircled the scroll after we began writing. And it will carry the memory and legacies of the many who will come close to, read from and dance with the scroll when it is complete.
The Torah is being interpreted in every generation according to the needs of that generation.
Moshe Chaim Ephraim of Sudilkov
Each physical Torah scroll is, as Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish taught, fire mixed with fire: a beautifully illuminated, energetically intense, generative and deeply alive combination of our ancestors’ stories, generations of interpretation and the legacy of those who have come close to the scroll.
On Simchat Torah, it is customary to read from the very end of the scroll, followed by the very beginning. The final letter of the Torah is a lamed, the first is a bet. Together, lamed and bet make up the word lev, “heart.” The heart of Torah pulses with words we already know and with stories, textures, colors and wisdom that we are still unfolding, discovering, dreaming and imagining. Simchat Torah is not only a celebration of the Torah we have inherited but also of our tradition’s endless invitation to keep imagining, to keep dreaming. So may it be for us in this new year.