1,500 Volunteers Stitched a Torah the Length of a Football Field

A hand-stitched Torah containing nearly 305,000 embroidered letters — made by more than 1,500 volunteers over a decade — is on view at Congregation Etz Chayim in Palo Alto through mid-January.

The Torah Stitch by Stitch project sews together more than 1,750 fabric squares into vertical panels standing 7 feet high. Connected side by side, the panels stretch roughly the length of a football field. The Palo Alto show is a traveling exhibition of high-resolution reproductions that are hard to distinguish from the original cloth, which remains in Toronto. The exhibit stopped at the Addison-Penzak JCC in Los Gatos earlier this fall and will move to the Oshman Family JCC in Palo Alto, the Peninsula JCC in Foster City and the Osher Marin JCC in San Rafael in 2027 and 2028.

Who made it, and how?

Temma Gentles, a Canadian Judaic textile artist and art educator, conceived the project as a way to help more people, particularly women, engage with Judaism's foundational text. It began in 2013 as a community project at Toronto's Holy Blossom Temple, where Gentles was an artist-in-residence, and grew into an international undertaking drawing cross-stitchers (small X-shaped stitches forming patterns on fabric) from 27 countries, including Israel, Belgium, Brazil, Japan, Vietnam and Zimbabwe. Most came from Canada and the United States; more than 40 live in Northern California. The tapestry was completed in 2023, just after Gentles died unexpectedly.

Each narrative square holds four Hebrew verses, and stitchers often added flourishes — birds, cacti, flowers, trees, decorative borders. Gentles sent each participant a kit: a printout of the verses, a needle, thread and a 14-inch gridded square of white cotton, plus encouragement to study the assigned passages.

The personal touches run deep. Karen Chisvin of Toronto recreated a vine pattern her great-grandmother first stitched in the late 1800s, before emigrating from Belarus to Canada. In a section of the Book of Numbers on women's oaths, Shelley Hebert of Palo Alto embroidered four iridescent butterflies for her mother, two aunts and a grandmother.

"Butterflies are something that are uplifting and yet ephemeral," said Hebert, a retired nonprofit executive and co-founder of the Stanford Jewish Alumni Network. She started as an "exceedingly humble beginner" and sought out commentaries by the medieval scholar Rashi. "There was a kind of intimacy in shaping each individual letter," she said.

Diane Bernbaum, a longtime quilter and retired director of Berkeley's Midrasha program for Jewish teens, stitched four squares, two with fellow Congregation Netivot Shalom member Vicki Sommer. "It was fun, it was contemplative, it was calming," Bernbaum said. "It was just a lovely thing to have done — to be proud of my work, to be challenged, just to be part of something so large."

Most participants are Jewish women, secular to observant, but at least 20 men took part, as did several Muslims and at least 200 Christians, including London nuns featured in the 2017 documentary "Stitchers — a Tapestry of Spirit."

What does the effort add up to?

Volunteers devoted an estimated 200,000 hours to the work. Amy Bayersdorfer, Etz Chayim's executive director and a project board member, said it "was just a really beautiful way for people to interact with Torah." Hebert's framed panels now hang in her living room beside her ketubah (Jewish marriage contract). As she put it: "It's something that's ancient and contemporary but essentially timeless."