Think you've got pressure at work?
Consider Rabbi Avraham Bloomenstiel's day.
The project will take about 18 months to finish, is guided by more than 4,000 Jewish laws and requires absolute precision.
One mistake — or even a badly misshapen letter — and the offending page may have to be buried in a cemetery, according to Jewish law.
"Unless the text is 100 percent accurate, there is no point in doing what we're doing," said Bloomenstiel, who was admitted to Harvard University at the age of 16 to study chemistry and later received a master's degree in music from the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University.
"In more than 3,000 years, Torahs differ in the neighborhood of eight to 10 letters, and none of those misspellings affect the meaning of the text."
The Torah consists of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. The sacred text is used in Jewish religious services for ritual readings and teaching.
Jews believe that — unlike the Christian Bible, which has been translated from Hebrew and Greek into thousands of languages — the Torah is a near-verbatim copy of G-d's word.
Bloomenstiel is a "sofer," or expert in the age-old art of transcribing Hebrew calligraphy, a job Jews believe began with Moses, the first scribe to reduce G-d's laws to writing.
Since then, on parchment and using bird feathers for pens, holy men have been copying the document by hand. An elaborate system of editing and proofreading is designed to make sure the Torah is pristine.
Most sofers live and work in Israel, the motherland of Judaism, where Bloomenstiel studied and was certified as a scribe. He worked for a while in Baltimore and then moved to Dallas with his wife and two children three years ago. They live within walking distance of their synagogue, which helps them follow the strict law against driving on the Sabbath.
A Hasidic Jew, Bloomenstiel wears conservative black clothing and a skullcap, and his face is framed by curled tendrils of hair — obedience to a commandment in the Torah, which is translated in Leviticus 19:27 as, "You shall not round the corners of your heads, nor mar the edges of your beards."
The sofer is considered one of Judaism's most pious professions.
"This is one of the most esoteric nooks in the Jewish world," Bloomenstiel said. "Most scribes are kinda like me, pudgy and sedentary, sitting in a corner writing the thing. And most people don't know anything about how it's done."
That's about to change.
Last month, Bloomenstiel and Rabbi Yaakov Rich, both of Congregation Toras Chaim here, decided to use high-tech tools to let the public into the decidedly old-school craft of creating a Torah scroll.
Rich, a graphic artist and Web designer, created www.ctc-torah.org to document the creation of the holy document. Videos featuring Bloomenstiel explain minutia — the preparation of the turkey quill for writing, to the mystical meanings of Hebrew script.
A blog features their thoughts, and links allow Jews to financially sponsor a letter or passage — or the entire document.
"Next to the formation of the synagogue itself, this is the second biggest event in our history," Rich said. "All Jewish law and philosophy and ethics and morals are derived from what's written in the Torah."
Since its formation about two years ago, Congregation Toras Chaim has relied on ancient Torah scrolls donated by members.
"To have our own is literally giving a soul to the synagogue," Rich said.
Jewish law requires the faithful to write a portion of the holy book in classical Hebrew. Because that is impossible for most people, financial sponsorship is the only way to fulfill the last of the religion's 613 commandments, called "mitzvahs."
"This could potentially be very educational," said Rabbi Yerachmiel Fried, dean of the Dallas Area Torah Association. "It takes years of expertise to get to the level of writing a Torah scroll.
"It is considered a very holy endeavor and there are few people who can do it. Now people have a way to get involved."
A congregation typically pays between $25,000 and $75,000 for a Torah scroll.
Fried, Bloomenstiel and Rich all said they believe the holy book is the first produced entirely in Dallas, perhaps evidence of the city's growing Orthodox Jewish community.
One rabbi compared the writing of the scroll to the birth of a child.
"This is a huge deal for the congregation and for the community," said Rabbi Jack Abramowitz, associate director of synagogue services for the Orthodox Union. "A lot of women blog about their pregnancy, and this is kind of the same thing. It's exciting, and it's an opportunity to educate people."
His days are ritualistic — each morning he takes a cleaning bath called a "mikvah" — and tedious. Hours pass in silence, with Bloomenstiel bent over a drafting table, peering through Coke-bottle glasses.
"This has always happened in cluttered little offices with men hunched over a desk with parchment and a quill," Bloomenstiel said. "I'm doing the same thing, except I have a parchment, quill, a webcam, a Web site, a Web designer and an interested virtual world.
"We're opening up the sofer's workshop."
ALLAS —
Think you've got pressure at work? 
