The 
story…
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. She was looking for a creative way to engage ordinary people with sacred text, through the traditional art of cross-stitch embroidery. Never one to shy away from thinking big, she announced, “Let’s stitch Torah”!
Starting in 2013 with just a few like-minded souls at Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto, the project unexpectedly went “viral”, eventually attracting over 1500 diverse stitchers from around the world. It took 10 years, but collectively we have created a glorious, cross-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 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.
