MemeMachineGo!

Wired has an interesting article on the problem of Torah theft.

Ritual Torahs don’t just roll off the printing press like yesterday’s newspaper. Under Judaic law, a new Torah must be meticulously copied from an existing scroll by a trained scribe, who pronounces each Hebrew letter aloud — for accuracy — before writing it on squares of animal skin. The pieces are later sewn together and reeled onto giant wooden rollers. The process takes a year, and a single letter broken or out of place renders a Torah unusable. […]

With a fair market value of around $50,000 for a new scroll, $9,000 for a used one, Judaism’s sacred text is in some ways a perfect underground commodity. […] But perhaps most attractive to a thief, and vexing to law enforcement, Torah scrolls are inherently anonymous. Jewish law dictates that not one character can be added to the 304,805 letters of the Torah’s text. That means no “property of” stamps, no serial numbers, no visible identifying marks of any kind.

(Via /.)