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The last of the 613 commandments is to write a Torah of one's own. The Jewish Federation of Greater Middlesex County fulfilled this mitzvah in becoming the nation's first federation to join in the writing of a sefer Torah for American Jewish troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Besides it being a mitzvah, if we have Jewish soldiers fulfilling their civic duty, the least we can do is support them by providing spiritual items for them like a Torah," Sandy Lenger, a resident of East Brunswick and the program's organizer, told The Jewish State.

The first of six planned, the project originated at the JCC's Association of North America board meeting last September and has traveled throughout the country including at the Jewish Federations of North America General Assembly in Washington, D.C., the Union for Reform Judaism biennial convention in Torah, and the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism convention in Cherry Hill.

On April 25, Rabbi Zerach Greenfield, a sofer (scribe), held two scroll-inscribing sessions, one at the Jewish Congregation of Concordia in Monroe and the other at the Rutgers University Student Center in New Brunswick.

The scroll is slated for completion next week at the JCC of North America biennial convention in Atlanta. On May 10, the Torah will be dedicated and presented to the United States military, in time for Shavuot.

Along with the federation, the program was co-sponsored by Rutgers Hillel, the Monroe Township Inter-Community Council, and the Jewish Chaplains Council.

Approximately 10,000 Jews are on active duty in the United States military, with another 10,000 in the reserves, according to Rabbi Barry Baron, deputy director of the Jewish Welfare Board's Jewish Chaplains Council.

"In total we say that Jews make up approximately 1 percent of the American military," Baron told The Jewish State.

At the Rutgers program, Baron spoke of his experience as a chaplain stationed in Afghanistan. He recalled his encounter with a Jewish soldier from Oregon, who he met on a base in Kabul. It was between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and the soldier had no place to observe the holidays.

The soldier, the only Jew in his National Guard unit, was born in Israel, but when his parents died at the age of 8 he was adopted by an unaffiliated Jewish family in the United States.

Baron realized that he needed to figure a way to get the young man to accompany him to his relocation to a base in Khandahar.

Baron convinced the soldier's sergeant that he required an armed escort to accompany him to the base, enabling the man to observe Yom Kippur. After the service, Baron asked the soldier what he enjoyed most about the day.

"When you sing, it reminded me of when I was a child in Israel and my father would sing," Baron recalled the soldier tell him.

"Most Jewish chaplains have stories similar to that," he said.

Baron also spoke about escorting the body of a soldier who was killed after a rocket struck the gym in which he was working out.

"We do such a nice job of dealing with deceased Jewish soldiers, we need to do a better job serving them while alive," he said.

That is why the Torah writing project is necessary, Baron said: "We know the power [of having a Torah] when we are in a strange and difficult time in life."

There are approximately 60 Torahs within the U.S. military, Baron explained, and how often they are used "depends where you are and when you are there."

On some bases, they are used during High Holidays and Shabbat. At others, they are used more "intermittently," he said.

The Torahs designed for U.S. troops are approximately 20 inches in length; its relative small size allows it to be easily transported in combat zones.

Israeli troops in contrast use full-size Torahs, Greenfield explained, since they don't have to travel far.

"In Israel, the enemy comes to us, we don't have to go to the enemy," said Greenfield, who lives in Israel.

There are several important skills that a sofer must posses, Greenfield told the audience. First, one needs to know the Hebrew alphabet and be able to write the letters in a clear and consistent manner.

"A sofer is a calligrapher who wants to make it as clear as possible," he said.

Second, a sofer must understand the laws regarding the letters.

"In Hebrew, every letter has meaning," he said, noting how the letter shin, which is the first letter in the Hebrew word for peace (shalom), is composed of two branches on the left and right, only completed with the third middle branch.

"To have peace you have to be able to make compromises," he said of the letter's metaphor.

Also, for a Torah to be kosher, a sofer must truly believe that his neshama, or soul, is connected to God. This is difficult, Greenfield said, because soferim are regular people who face the stresses of everyday life.

To maintain that connection, Greenfield said that soferim must immerse themselves in the mikvah and recite a special prayer before engaging with their work. Furthermore, a sofer writes no more than four or five hours a day, he added, completing one column each day (most Torah's written today contain 248 columns).

Over the past several decades, there have been three major changes in the world of soferim, Greenfield explained. First was the Holocaust, in which a large percentage of the world's soferim were killed. The second is the concentration of Jews in Israel, leading to increased uniformity in Torah writing today. The third is the use of computer technology to check the accuracy of the completed scroll. While computer technology aids the process, Greenfield maintained that the old technique of checking the scroll letter by letter (which is still done today following the computer check) worked.

"Before computers, we did have kosher sefer Torahs in the world," he said.