Facts about Torah Scrolls
The Torah makes up the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. The Torah scrolls are read in a synagogue and are always hand written and they are written in Hebrew.
The Jewish Bible is divided into three parts: the Law (Torah), the Prophets, and a miscellaneous group of works known as the Writings, which correspond roughly to the Christian Old Testament. (The Catholic text contains passages and works not admitted into the Jewish Bible.) Of these three, the Law is in some ways the most important, for it is the law that defines for Jews what God expects of them and provides a means ensure win his favor and protection. The Law is viewed by pious Jews as a special blessing granted God's chosen people to show them the path to virtue while other peoples languish in ignorant sin. Many people assume that the ethics of Judaism and Christianity are based primarily on the Ten Commandments, but in fact Jews are called to observe some six hundred commandments and Christians usually do not observe two of the ten, having rejected the Jewish Sabbath for the Lord s Day early in their history and freely violating the commandment against graven images by sculpting innumerable images of Christ as the divine savior. The first ten are set apart, and repeated, in the text, and are obviously considered as important; but in some ways the subsequent laws are more revealing. Almost all peoples have outlawed murder, theft, and adultery, however they defined them; but the other Jewish laws reflect the attitudes and customs of the people who followed them. An orthodox Jew is expected to observe strictly all of the laws (except, of course those relating to ritual sacrifice which were suspended after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE). Unlike in Christianity, belief is not the central issue--obedience is. The delivery of the law is depicted as the aftermath of generations of slavery in Egypt followed by forty years of wandering in the wilderness of the Sinai Peninsula.