We would like to thank you for the extensive article about the Women’s Torah Project in your current issue. We are thrilled with the project’s recent expansion and momentum. I would like to correct some critical misstatements, however, which are not statements I made, nor were they included in the pre-publication draft the author read to me.
We are in mediation, not litigation, with our first scribe. Referring to this as “litigation” and describing it as a dispute over payment are both incorrect and compromise the sensitive and confidential nature of the mediation, which has taken over a year to set up. We had agreed, with our mediator, not to refer publicly to the specifics of our issues while mediation is in process, a situation which I explained during my interview. Sadly, we are concerned that publishing these remarks might jeopardize an already extraordinarily difficult situation.
Also, there are actually over 4,000 rules, not 400, that guide the scribing of the Torah. The artists working on the Torah embellishments have not yet finalized their designs and materials, although Aimee Golant (not Galant) is considering copper, which is halachically acceptable, for the rimonim.
Three other artists actively involved with creating embellishments for this first women-scribed Torah are Sooze Bloom deLeon Grossman, Torah mantle; Andrea Sher-Leff, wimple clasp; and Laurel Robinson, yad. Space probably did not permit describing their ideas and background, but their stories and all of our plans can be found on our Web site,
www.womenstorah.com.