before Torah reading and all days during the first blessings of the morning prayer (Shacharit). Production According to halakha (Jewish law), a Sefer Torah is a copy of the Hebrew text of the Torah handwritten on special types of parchment by using a quill or another permitted writing utensil, dipped in ink. Producing a Torah scroll fulfills one of the 613 commandments. Written entirely in Biblical Hebrew, a Torah scroll contains 304,805 letters, all of which must be duplicated precisely by a trained scribe, or sofer, an effort which may take as long as approximately one and a half years. An error during transcription may render the Torah scroll pasul ("invalid"). According to the Talmud, all scrolls must also be written on gevil parchment that is treated with salt, flour and m'afatsim (a residue of wasp enzyme and tree bark) in order to be valid. Scrolls not processed in this way are considered invalid. There are only two types of kosher parchment allowed for a Torah scroll: gevil and klaf. The ink used is subject to specific rules. After the preparation of the parchment sheet, the scribe must mark out the parchment using the sargel ("ruler") ensuring the guidelines are straight. Only the top guide is done and the letters suspended from it. Most modern Torah scrolls are written with forty-two lines of text per column (Yemenite Jews use fifty-one). Very strict rules about the position and appearance of the Hebrew alphabet are observed. Any of several Hebrew scripts may be used, most of which are fairly ornate and exacting. The fidelity of the Hebrew text of the Tanakh, and the Torah in particular, is considered paramount, down to the last letter: translations or transcriptions are frowned upon for formal service use, and transcribing is done with painstaking care. Some errors are inevitable in the course of production. If the error involves a word other than the names of God the mistaken letter may be obliterated from the scroll by scraping the letter off the scroll with a sharp object. If the name of God is written in error, the entire page must be cut from the scroll and a new page added, and the page written anew from the beginning. The new page is sewn into the scroll to maintain continuity of the document. The old page is treated with appropriate respect, and is buried with respect rather than