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Stephanie Breitsman
Jarrad Saffren | Staff Writer
Photo by Rachel Forth
G od may have inspired the Torah, but the creator did not
actually write the book. That was a human being. Stephanie
Breitsman, 32, probably would have understood this if she
had paused to consider it. But she never gave it a second thought.

The rabbi in training at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in
Wyncote just felt “anxious around Torah,” she said. Like the people
at synagogue who are afraid to volunteer to lift the Torah during
services, she was worried she would drop it and offend God … or
something like that.

That was until Breitsman met a fellow RRC student who had a job
as a sofer, or as a scribe who writes and corrects Torah scrolls. The
conversation made the West Philadelphia resident realize that she
wanted “a relationship with the physi-
cal Torah.” She spent the summer of
2022 learning the sofer craft from
Rabbi Izzy Pludwinski in Jerusalem.

Then, when the rabbinical student
got back, she started having online
meetings with the first-ever female
sofer, Rabbi Jen Taylor Friedman, who
lives in England.

Finally, in late February at
Congregation Adath Jeshurun in Elkins
Park, Breitsman corrected a Torah
scroll for the first time. It had a spelling
mistake. Synagogue leaders recog-
nized it during a parshat reading in late
January. They reached out to a network
of scribes and one of them, Rabbi Bec
Richman of Cleveland Heights, Ohio,
contacted Breitsman. The rabbinical
student had to change one Hebrew
letter, zayin, to another, nun.

It may have been the thrill of her life.

“Torah scrolls are precious. It feels
like communal care. Caring for the
heart of a community,” she said. “We
carry these ritual objects with us.

They maintain that connection with
our ancestors, with that longstanding
tradition.” Breitsman will graduate from the
RRC in 2024. She said that she would
like to work as a scribe and as the spiri-
tual leader of a community. Right now,
as she begins her scribal career, she is
also the religious adviser for the Hillel
chapter at Bryn Mawr College.

“I feel invested in Philadelphia and
the Jewish community here. In an ideal
world, I’d love to be a working scribe
in Philadelphia and to be serving a
community. Whether it be a Hillel or a
congregation,” the student added.

Breitsman did not grow up in a
Jewish household. Her family was not
religious. But during her freshman year
at Ursinus College in Collegeville, she
showed up one day for a campus
garden tour. Breitsman was the
only student on the tour. Her guide
happened to be the president of the
school’s Hillel chapter. That night, the
freshman went to the Hillel house for
Shabbat dinner, and then, as she put
it, “I never looked back.”
Between 20 and 30 students
welcomed each other in, sat around
the table, sang, ate and discussed the
importance of “setting the work of the
week down,” Breitsman said. It felt
like home. And that was not a feeling
she was accustomed to as a freshman
living in a dorm. The future rabbi did
not convert during her college years.

But she spent the next four years at
Hillel. It was both her social home and
her most important activity. She lived
in the house as a senior and served
as co-president, organizing Shabbat
dinners like the one she attended
three years earlier.

The future rabbi graduated with a
degree in Middle Eastern studies. After
college, she earned a master’s degree
in the same subject from George
Washington University in Washington,
D.C. Then she spent more than three
years at Americans for Peace Now,
a Jewish organization that supports
a two-state solution to the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict.

But as she did that work, she felt
more drawn to the individual conver-
sations she was having with people
who cared about the same issue.

They discussed what was happening
from the perspective of Jewish ethics.

Breitsman realized that she “felt more
useful” in those conversations than
in job tasks like drafting fundraising
materials. She was also starting to
go to synagogue, at Sixth & I in D.C.,
regularly. After converting there with
Rabbi Shira Stutman, the millennial
decided to go to rabbinical school.

“I have more to offer on a personal
level than on a larger political level,”
she said.

Part of her rabbinical mission will
be to “demystify what the Torah is,”
Breitsman added. She wants to lead
programs that teach Jews that the
scroll is not just the word of God, but
also “the work of our own hands.”
“Physically manifesting and bringing
into the world this spiritual tradition of
Judaism,” she concluded. ■
jsaffren@midatlanticmedia.com JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
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