Interview with Jacqueline Jürgenliemk (Göttingen 2005)
“At the Shacharit, that is the Saturday morning service, it is our Torah service. If we have a minyan *, that’s 10 believing Jews - in our congregation, Jews are also involved in the minyan - if we have 10 together, then we can perform a Torah service. That means, we have a longer service, where in the course of this service we get out of the Aron ha-Kodesh - this is our Torah shrine - we put it on the bima - the bima is there, the Torah scrolls, because they are rolled to be able to spread. And then we read the week segment from the Torah scroll and then roll up the Torah again and it comes back into the Aron ha-Kodesh. I can show you the Torah scrolls now. As you can see, we have several Torah scrolls, they are old Torah scrolls that we have borrowed or given as gifts. The Torah scrolls are generally richly adorned because they are the most important component of Judaism in general. They are our law and they are the soul of Judaism. On top of that are these plugs that adorn the holders of the Torah scroll. The Torah scroll is always adorned with a shield. We have several of them. And on the holidays the Torah is also adorned with a crown, which is then placed on top of the Torah scroll. We have the so-called jad here. We are never allowed to read the lines on the Torah scroll because it is handwritten with our greasy and damp fingers. That is why we have a spare finger: the jad * with which we follow the lines. The Torah scroll is written unvocalized, which means that it is only written in the consonants of the Hebrew script and is sung in a kind of spoken chant. And that is a very special chant that you have to learn and that is why we as laypeople and non-theologians cannot carry out this service, but then we either need a rabbinical student or a rabbi.”
* Minjan: Quorum of at least ten Jews of age to hold a service
* Hebrew: the hand