Description: A Jewish congregation in Hawaii needs a Torah -- we follow the painstaking year-long hand-making of a scroll in Israel. Conflicts arise about the text, its origins, meaning, value. A wellspring of laws and stories for monotheistic religions, the Torah engenders hot debate—even hatred. But when the scroll arrives at its Hawaiian home, what impact will it really have?
A Jewish immigrant long troubled by his faith finds himself compelled to film the astonishing process of a Torah scroll. The workshops and factories where camera-shy artisans and machine operators perform their work are tucked away in hidden enclaves in Israel. Unable to gain access otherwise, the filmmaker must commission a new Torah — and donate it to a worthy community that doesn’t already own one.
On a kind of ad-hoc pilgrimage, the filmmaker-turned-commissioner documents the mind-boggling process. In encounters with scholars and religious leaders of all stripes, he explores the meaning of the ancient laws and stories of the Old Testament — the heart of Judaism, a wellspring for Christianity and Islam. And, having found a community without its own Torah on Hawaii’s Big Island, he partners with a young, charismatic and ultraorthodox Rabbi to make the grand donation. But the aloha spirit and human bein
Member of Jewish Community, Kona