Shavuot (שבועות) is one of the three pilgrimage festivals, prescribed by the Torah, during which we celebrate the beginning of the wheat harvest and the giving of the Torah. The 304,805 letters1 of the Torah are scrupulously reproduced by a sofer (סוֹפֵר – scribe) on a klaf2 (קְלָף – parchment). The oldest 3 Torah scroll (1250), still in use, is in Biella, northern Italy. The synagogue where it is kept is located in the ghetto on the top floor of a building that stands in the courtyard of a house that cannot be identified from the outside. The age of the Séfer Torah is an indication of a Jewish presence from the 13th century. A stable Jewish community is attested4 in 1577. The ghetto was established by the House of Savoy in 1723, in the medieval quarter where the Jews were settled. In 1761, there were 5 26 people. With the emancipation of 1848, a hundred Jews resided in the city. Today, a small community still remains.
Inside the synagogue, you can admire at the bottom a holy ark (ארון הקודש – aron ha-kodesh), from the 18th century, in carved wood painted in light blue and center a podium (תֵּבָה – tevah) in walnut carved with plant motifs dating from 1868. The ceiling is decorated with a fresco in the neoclassical style and the floor is in Venetian mosaic, the wooden chandeliers date from the 18th th century.
1 5,845 verses and 79,976 words.
2 It takes about 60 skins of a kosher animal to make a sefer.
3 Carbon 14 dating conducted by the geochronology laboratory of the University of ‘Illinois.
4 Appointment of Mosè Ebreo di Massera (Jewish Moses of Massera) as representative of Duke Emanuele Filiberto of Savoy.
5 First general census of the Biella ghetto, six families were counted.