Eating Your Words Never Tasted So Good…
by: jake shafran
chief operating officer
the taste the parchment had between my teeth was impeccable. i ate page after page of the scroll, and every moment was joyous and without reserve. i tore column from column, letter from letter, in my tasting of the Torah.
not many people take “eating your words” literally, but i wanted to try it. it was truly a remarkable experience that i must recommend to anyone interested in learning about Judaism. as someone who grew up Jewish, i’m no stranger to the Torah. i held its scrolls when i turned thirteen. i read from it every friday, and yet, i had never tasted it.
i smelled it frequently, sneaking the thirty-pound, four-foot scroll past the rabbi and night janitor to smell it on saturdays. it was my nightly ritual to inhale the sweet scent of old parchment written by some dude huddled in a corner for ten years. my sunday school teacher said it sometimes takes that long for a Torah to be finished, and i ruined it in one sitting. what can i say? i’m wild like that.
it became a completely healthy, completely realistic obsession, smelling the Torah. who could judge me? not the rabbi, who spent hours pouring over its words to learn their meaning. not the teachers, who spent hours pouring over its words to make a curriculum. not my parents, who encouraged me to learn more about the Torah at every turn. they just didn’t say how, so i took that message to heart.
when i decided to eat the Torah, i knew it would be a pricy investment. used miniature Torahs on eBay cost a whopping $70.00, and that’s one tenth of the size i wanted. the full experience was paramount, so i saved my money and piled together $28,000 to purchase the authentic Kosher Torah scroll off of Amazon.
shipping was ridiculous. it took four months, and it said it was Prime shipping. honestly, if i were to do this again (which i am), i would totally buy my products from a Jewish goods store somewhere in downtown pittsburgh. i’d even invest my time to drive up to new york city. sometimes, shopping online isn’t the answer. still, i did it, so you don’t have to.
i can’t stress enough how much you should do this. i’m near begging you to spend a semester worth of harvard’s tuition and eat my holy book. it would make you such a great person, and everyone will love you. the fame you will reach will be equal to mine, absolutely none. you will be considered a monster.
jake’s grade: a+++.
p.s. i’m being kidnapped and forced to write movie reviews. save me.
**April Fool’s!