 Tifereth Israel Synagogue owns twelve Torah Scrolls. Nine are in the Silverman Sanctuary, two are in the Goodman Chapel, and one is a Holocaust Memorial Scroll.
Visitors to the synagogue are impressed by the number of Torah scrolls in our Arks. They are even more surprised to learn that, except for differences in calligraphy, they all contain exactly the same text.
The current text of the Torah was fixed and published by a group of Jews known as the Masoretes who lived between the 7th and 10th century C.E. Before the Masoretes, one could find slight differences in some scrolls due to scribal errors and different textual traditions. Because of the Masoretes, today all Torah Scrolls are identical. If you are reading a Torah Scroll and find an error, it is taken out of use until it is corrected.
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Midrash ascribes the fixing of Torah Scrolls to an earlier time. According to the Midrash, Moses wrote the first Torah Scroll himself and kept it in the Ark of the Covenant. This tradition is traced to the Book of Exodus where God says to the Israelites: "And deposit in the Ark the Pact which I will give you." (Ex. 25:16) According to Rashi, the "Pact" refers to the entire Torah. Thus Moses kept his Torah in the Ark. (Note: most scholars believe that the "Pact" refers to the tablets with the Ten Commandments. They believe it was the tablets alone that the Ark contained.)
The Midrash further explains that before Moses died, he had twelve copies of his scroll written and gave one to each tribe of Israel. The original scroll was put back in the Ark and kept there as the primary source of all Torah Scrolls. If there was ever a question about the accuracy of a Torah Scroll, it was checked against Moses' original.
When Rabbi Zalman Sorotzkin, a renowned Orthodox scholar, died in Jerusalem at the age of 85, one of his eulogizers was Yitzchok Zev Halevi Soloveitchik. Rabbi Soloveitchik said that Rabbi Sorotzkin was not a very public person. He preferred to stay in his home in Jerusalem rather than to be out in public. In this way, he said, Rabbi Sorotzkin was like Moses' original Torah Scroll; guarded in the Ark. Rabbi Sorotzkin's "Torah" was protected from any outside influence or change.
With all due respect to Rabbi Sorotzkin's scholarship and leadership of his community, I do not agree that a talmid chacham (Jewish religious scholar) hiding from society is praiseworthy. It is fairly easy to preserve one's faith and guard one's ethical behavior if one lives in a cave or monastery. It is much more difficult to live a Godly life when one is confronted by the difficulties and challenges of life and society.
 God made that point when God spoke to Abraham about his intention to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. God specifically said that God would save the city if righteous people were found "in the city."
Righteousness is defined by the ability to confront and overcome evil, not by one's ability to hide from it.
Shabbat Shalom,
Tifereth Israel Synagogue
San Diego, California
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