Sefer Torah is compared to a Tree of Life not only because of the equity between Learning of the Torah and Life of a Jew. Anything artificial would be poisonous to the nature and even more so to the Sefer Torah. Being a source of life, Torah does not tolerate any unnatural rationale.

It is true in case of the substances of Sefer Torah too. It can not be printed on a paper, xeroxed or artificially multiplied. By the same token its ingredients - eriot (folios), gidim (threads), dio (ink) and kulmus (quill) are made of natural things and possess natural characteristics. Thus while making a Sefer Torah we are reminded that animals and minerals can have a holy purpose. Writing Torah scroll is a delicate and sophisticated matter that implies much more that the writing skills themselves. A sofer is required to be an expert in a number of contingent fields. He has to know, for instance, the qualities and differences of a variety of types of parchment. Parchment can be made of the specially prepared skin of a kosher animal - goat, bull /cow, or deer. The skin of an animal has to be soaked in limewater for nine days. When it is a hairless surface, the sofer stretches it on a drying frame. He scrapes the skin until it is dry. Than he sands it until it becomes a flat, smooth sheet fit for writing.

Each of different types of parchment has specific characteristics that fit certain kind of ink (dio). Finally, the sofer applies a straight edge to draw a writing pattern - usually forty two horizontal lines across the parchment and two ertical lines defining the boundaries for each column. He also leaves a blank space between the area designed for writing and the margin - according to the tradition, it has to be five fingers wide.

     Thus, a sofer will have at least three-four columns on each piece of the parchment - called amudim (from amud, a column). In general, there should be no less than three amudim on one eriah and not more than eight. Now the parchment is waiting for the writing process to start.

     Secrets of the preparation of the ink (dio) usually go by word of mouth from generation to generation. Only the obvious, well known and easy-to found part of the manual production of ink is disclosed. Quality of ink is directly proportional to the longevity of the text written on the parchment. A nicely prepared mixture of certain chemical elements may result in additional fifty- hundred years of the active usage of the Sefer Torah. Ink has to be always fresh - therefore a small portion is prepared, needed for half-a-day work - and hand-made. It is usually made of a blend of gallnuts, copper sulfate crystals, Arabic gum and water. In order to make the quill running smoothly the parchment may be covered either by a special substance (ointment), called mashichah, that makes it surface glittering white, or by a special chalk-based substance (kelach). Mashichah is applied to both sides of the parchment to make it look nicer. There is a well-known makhloket (polemics) whether the mashichah should be perceived as an additional layer on which the letters are written; in that case the Sefer Torah should be viewed as problematic since its letters were not written on the parchment itself but rather on the additional layer. Most of the Rabbis, however, do not support this viewpoint because the meshichah is never considered a separate entity, rather it is additional embellishment for the whole process of writing. Since the skin of the animal has darker and lighter stains, sometimes the sofer applies kelach (chalk) to the parchment in order to make it color homogeneously white. However, today most of Sefardi congregations as well as Litvaks prefer Sifrei Torah written on a parchment which is either not mashuach, or mashuach only on the backside. Parchment with kelach surface is desirable worldwide. When the sofer finishes writing the text on the first square piece of the parchment, he sews (makes tefirah) to it an identical square piece that resemble the pages of the book. Those pieces of the parchment used for the Sefer Torah are called eriot (eriah - folio). They are connected by means of a needle and giddin - specially processed ox, cow's, or sheep's leg sinews - used as a thread. A sofer makes a stitch on every six line of each of the sewed eriot. Finally, the main tool of a sofer - his ink quill. According to the law of sofrim, either a goose or a turkey feather, laboriously sharpened to facilitate a special angle convenient to the Sofer's handwriting writes the text of the Sefer Torah. A scribe writes with the stem of the quill, not the barbs. A scribe may need two-four quills for the whole Sefer Torah. However, it may take him a day or two to ensure a correct sharpness of the quill. The better the angle is measured the nicer will be shaped the letters and consequently the better will be the quality of a script.