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Later that evening Jake entered his Evanston split-level, and traded his shoes for his cozy blue slippers. The Torah still laying on his dining room table to the right of the entrance reminded him to return it to the Young Israel synagogue. Since the faded letter had been fixed they could actively use it during services.
The only reason he hadn’t returned it yet was that puzzling loose handle.
He stood over the Torah, and gently wiggled the top right handle. Torah scrolls have both ends wound around wooden rollers. Wooden roller plates are slipped over the top and bottom handles of each roller to protect the edges of the parchment.
Jake often held Torah scrolls with loose or wobbly roller plates—but never one with loose handles. So how was the handle on this Torah loose?
He passed through the dining room into the kitchen to fix himself a sandwich.
The fixer-upper's original wooden kitchen cabinets were stained dark brown, and encrusted with forty years of grease and dirt. It took him nine months to sand and repaint them white. To honor his mother’s Dutch roots he fashioned wooden shoes into door and drawer handles, and hung blue gingham curtains on the sink and back door windows.
Jake tugged a fridge handle and heard the whoosh as it opened. The flood of light helped him scout a Ziploc sandwich bag filled with a few slices of leftover roast beef.
He opened the bag, and cautiously lifted it to his nose.
After deciding the questionable smell still passed muster, he lined two slices of rye with yellow mustard and tomato slices, slapped the roast beef on one, and completed the sandwich with the other.
He sat at the small, black laminate kitchen table shoved into the corner while his mouth wolfed it down, and his brain contemplated the wobbly handle mystery.
He washed that down with iced tea, and felt a sliver of roast beef lodged between his front teeth. He worked the tip of a toothpick between his teeth until it cracked—one end stuck in his teeth, and the other pinched between his thumb and forefinger. He continued wiggling the part stuck in his teeth until he dislodged the tiny bit of meat.
That’s it!
He rushed back to the Torah to roll the scroll back to the beginning to expose the right wooden roller thinking it cracked like the toothpick.
That would explain how the handle could be wobbly.
Rolling the Torah scroll back to the beginning is a usually two man job, but Jake managed to roll back until the right roller was exposed.
He was disappointed to find it intact.
He wiggled the loose handle to see which part of the pole moved.
It took a few tries until he finally noticed a tiny slit in the wood open and close as he wiggled the handle.
It didn’t look like a crack. In fact, it looked expertly crafted—done intentionally.
This was even more puzzling.
Who would do such a thing?
What purpose could it serve?
He gently moved the handle back and forth, then began twisting it.
Eureka!
He continued twisting it until finely carved threads revealed themselves.
He couldn’t fully unscrew it because the parchment was attached to the roller with cow sinew. He didn’t have the patience to wait for a trained sofer to remove it, so he rationalized that whatever damage he was about to inflict could always be repaired.
Jake retrieved a razor knife from the upstairs bedroom-office, and slit the top sinew to release the upper part of the roller.
He finally managed to completely unscrew the handle, and revealed a cavity in the roller.
He used his flashlight app to peer deep into the opening.
It was empty.