Ancient Torah Scroll

What an amazing discovery! I'd love to see it in person.

Although the Leningrad and the Aleppo bibles – both of them Hebrew codexes, or books – pre-date the Bologna scroll by more than 200 years, this is the oldest Torah scroll of the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses, according to the Italian professor of Hebrew in the University of Bologna’s cultural heritage department.

Such scrolls – this one is 36 meters (40 yards) long and 64 centimeters (25 inches) high – are brought out in synagogues on the Sabbath and holidays, and portions are read aloud in public.

I wonder why this scroll resides in a dusty old library instead of a synagogue? Doesn't it belong to someone?


 

I Want One!

H/T: Legal Insurrection

Literary interlude: Morpho sanguinalis

by Julie Jansen


Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

The first recorded sighting of Morpho sanguinalis in the Pacific Northwest occurred in 2020. Dr Fitzmorris identified it as he gazed through a pair of binoculars into his Seattle backyard. The world-renowned entomologist knew the South American butterfly well.

An unmistakable species, the Morpho was enormous, with brilliant azure wings that spanned 20 inches. Beauty was its only redeeming quality. Dr Fitzmorris had lost half his men to the insect during his last expedition to the Venezuelan jungle. The trip was a nightmare he would never forget. Morpho sanguinalis had a taste for human blood. With its mosquito-like proboscis, a group of Morphos could drain the blood from an adult human in less than an hour.

Read the story here.