Lights鈥攔ed, blue, green, orange鈥攆lash in 鈥檚 multispectral imaging lab in the 人妻少妇专区鈥檚 Rush Rhees Library, strategically tucked beside
Under the lights and the lens of a multispectral imaging system is a Torah scroll, probably dating to around 1900. Torah scrolls are long rolls of parchment, each suspended between two wooden rollers and containing the handwritten Hebrew text of the Torah. Now entrusted to the congregation of the in Syracuse, New York, the scroll once belonged to a European congregation鈥攗ntil the Holocaust.
After Nazi forces invaded Bohemia and Moravia in 1939, German authorities ordered the region鈥檚 Jewish congregations to surrender their religious books, liturgical objects, and records. More than 200,000 items were held in , including almost 1,800 Torah scrolls.
In the 1960s, the organization was established in London; it began to purchase the scrolls, documenting them and repairing them, and then placing them with Jewish congregations around the world, creating a sacred, tangible link between them and congregations lost to the Holocaust.
In 1965, Carol Holstein Killian 鈥�70 and her father traveled to London; at the request of their rabbi, they visited the trust and ultimately arranged for the placement of a Torah scroll with their congregation, Temple Concord. The scroll is on permanent loan from the trust and is used by Temple Concord for selected services. Known as MST#149, it came from a synagogue in Pardubice, a town east of Prague, in what was then Czechoslovakia.
Last fall, Killian and her husband, Ronald Killian 鈥�70, visited Temple Concord to view the scrolls. They inspected the inscriptions written on thin strips of paper around the edges of the rollers鈥攂ut time and handling had blurred and obscured some of the text. Killian contacted Gregory Heyworth, an associate professor of English, to see if the Lazarus Project could help.
Heyworth calls his research specialty 鈥渢extual science,鈥� and the multi-spectral imaging group he established鈥攖he , a not-for-profit organization鈥攗se different wavelengths of light to photograph and analyze cultural artifacts, using digital imagery to salvage objects whose legibility would otherwise be lost to time.
This March, Killian brought two scrolls鈥擬ST#149 and a similar one also held by Temple Concord, its first congregation unknown鈥攖o Heyworth鈥檚 imaging lab in Rush Rhees Library, to see what could be discovered about the scrolls鈥� origins.
IN PICTURES
(人妻少妇专区 photos / J. Adam Fenster)
TAKING THE MEASURE: Imaging the text on the edges of the scrolls鈥� wooden rollers 鈥渋s very precise work,鈥� says Heyworth鈥攁nd a learning opportunity for his students, both undergraduate and graduate, who are learning the art of textual science. With Heyworth鈥檚 guidance, students made calculations and adjustments to ensure that the scrolls were rotated by exactly 20 degrees and placed in proper relation to the lights and lens.
PROPER POSITION: Heyworth (left) and Pooja Priya 鈥�20, a student in his Digital Media Studies course, prepare the scrolls for imaging. The process involves photographing artifacts scores or even hundreds of times under different wavelengths of light. The best resulting images are then digitally stitched together to give a complete, enhanced picture of the object.
HIDDEN TEXT: Bands on the scroll rollers contain illegible text, which Heyworth believes could connect the scrolls to a lost congregation. Every Lazarus Project venture involves a designated lead scholar鈥攆or the Torah scrolls, it鈥檚 , an assistant professor of Hebrew language and literature in Rochester’s . She has already determined that the second set of scrolls was created specifically by a German congregation to give to a Jewish synagogue in the United States.
LIKE FIREWORKS: Each Lazarus Project artifact is photographed under various ultraviolet wavelengths of light, filters narrowing the wavelength of what the camera is seeing, because Heyworth never knows in advance what fluorescence band will provide the most revealing image of the object. He says the best description he鈥檚 ever heard of the Lazarus Project process came from a Cambridge conservator: 鈥淚t鈥檚 like fireworks in slow motion.鈥�
SEEING THE RESULTS: Heyworth and his team survey the images as they take them. The work is exacting, but the excitement comes with the results, he says, when the best images are brought together and 鈥渢he scholar can suddenly see the script.鈥�
PRESERVING THE FUTURE: Students in Heyworth鈥檚 course Digital Imaging: Transforming Real into Virtual are trained first in handling manuscripts. Gradually, they begin to learn to use Lazarus鈥檚 imaging system. 鈥淏y the time they鈥檙e working with an artifact, they know the principles of photography for cultural heritage objects,鈥� says Heyworth.
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Trained as a scholar of medieval literature, Gregory Heyworth has become a 鈥渢extual scientist.鈥� He recovers the words and images of cultural heritage objects that have been lost, through damage and erasure, to time. To rescue them, he and collaborators on the aptly named Lazarus Project use a transportable multispectral imaging lab鈥攖he only one in the world鈥攖o make the undecipherable, and even the invisible, legible again.
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