The robot that wrote a Torah

Technology has affected many a trade but could one of the most sacred Jewish roles now be at risk, that of the Torah scribe?

Time magazine reports that a robot scribe has just gone on display at Berlin's Jewish Museum. The invention of a German artists' group called robotlab, it takes the machine sofer only three months to complete a Torah scroll compared with a whole year needed by its human counterpart.

But the traditional sofer can relax. For one thing, a Torah must be written with a goose quill and the robot writer has yet to master that.