Two Rabbis Are NFT'ing the Torah, the 'Original Blockchain'

[RSRS]

Perhaps it was inevitable. NFTs or non-fungible tokens, the blockchain-based certificates tied to digital or physical collectibles, have popped up in Hollywood, sports, gaming, fashion, and consumer products. Now they’re going spiritual.

Two tech-savvy rabbis, Jonathan Caras in Jerusalem and Mordecai Lightstone in Brooklyn, are turning the Torah into NFTs.

The “NFTorah” project began with a series of commissioned artworks, each representing a portion (or chapter) of the sacred Jewish text, that went on sale on OpenSea earlier this month. But the next step is to create NFTs tied to individual letters in a hand-written Torah scroll.

If the idea of an NFT representing just one letter in a very long text sounds comically miniature, the concept is not new in Judaism. Owning a physical Torah scroll is considered a mitzvah (good deed), since a proper Torah scroll is hand-inscribed by a trained artisan on parchment paper in a sacred process that can cost as much as $50,000. For years, there have already been programs for religious Jews to purchase and “own” a single letter in a physical Torah. Caras and Lightstone are just taking the concept digital.

“By purchasing a single letter in a Torah, technically speaking, the letter you own completes the whole scroll,” Lightstone says. “Therefore, you’ve now fulfilled the commandment of owning one. So we wanted to take this to the NFT space. I like to say we’re the first NFT project that’s hitting things on the digital, physical, and spiritual level.”

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