Latest Developments
We are excited to launch a new exhibition concept for smaller or non-museums who would like to share our extraordinary story.
Recently on display in Tel Aviv’s Reich Centre, this exhibit includes five stunning full-size digital prints on canvas, representing the work of over 100 of our 1500 stitchers. It also includes a series of exquisite illuminations from elsewhere in the Tapestry, a map representing our global reach, and a list of local stitchers who took part in the project. The documentary short, “Stitchers – a Tapestry of Spirit”, fills in more of our inspiring story.
Beginning in September 2026, this exhibition concept will be available in both Canada and the USA, home to many hundreds of our stitchers. Practical and easy to hang, it captures both the scale of the work, and its fine creative detail.
For complete installation specifications, please contact Lili Shain, President, at lili.torahstitchbystitch@gmail.com
Award winning Judaic textile artist, and Founder of the Torah Stitch by Stitch Project.
Kosansky, Ruth Burshtein, Pat Little.
Not pictured: Kathy Frost, Dara Nathanson, Susan Mogil, Lili Shain, Temma Gentles.
If Scribes were Stitchers
Cloth instead of parchment. Thread instead of ink. Needle instead of quill. Sacred text and ancient craft meet in a unique blend of creativity and passion. This is Torah Stitch by Stitch.
It took 10 years, and over 1500 dedicated volunteers, to create our monumental, embroidered tribute to the Torah, with complete Hebrew text and hundreds of folk-art illuminations.
Entirely hand-stitched, it measures 7 feet in height and 100 yards in length, showcasing both the grand vision of its founder, and the exquisite details created by its many makers.
It is an extraordinary piece of work, and has a fascinating backstory.
Temma Gentles z”l, our founder, and award-winning textile artist, began this project “in a moment of inspired lunacy ” as she liked to say. Her idea was to engage ordinary people with sacred text, using the medium of textile art. Never one to shy away from thinking big, she announced, “Let’s stitch Torah”!
Starting with just a few like-minded souls, the project unexpectedly went “viral”, attracting over 1500 diverse stitchers from all over the world. It took 10 years, but collectively we have created a glorious, stitched, rendering of the Torah that evokes the illuminated manuscripts of old, on an immense scale.
The project was featured in a 2017 award-winning documentary short: Stitchers: A Tapestry of Spirit. The film celebrated the remarkable cross-section of people who have embraced this project: men and women, religious and secular, young and old — an eclectic international community united by love of Torah and textile arts.
By 2019, we were half way through this extraordinary venture, and had the opportunity to to see the dream take shape when the first half of the project was exhibited at the Textile Museum of Canada, to great acclaim.
We rejoiced when, despite the setbacks of Covid, the last three columns of the Torah were finally assembled in early 2023, as seen here in the group photo. Temma’s last newsletter excitedly shared this news with our stitching community. The project was really finished!
It seemed almost unbelievable.
Sadly, Temma passed away unexpectedly only a few months later, before ever seeing our beautiful stitched Torah displayed in its entirety.
It now falls to us to take these final steps: to find a home for this monumental work, and to share its inspiring story.
