That’s How You Make a Torah — Virtual Film Talk with Filmmaker Lauren Greenhall

New York comes to the screen for a focused, intimate evening: a virtual film talk of That’s How You Make a Torah, a documentary by filmmaker Lauren Greenhall that traces the emergence of the first known female Torah scribes. Streaming on Thursday, March 19 at 6pm ET, this pay-what-you-wish event marks Women’s History Month with close-up views of calligraphy, parchment, and the quiet spatial rituals of a practice usually observed behind closed doors. The location for this screening is New York, New York, with the event presented virtually so viewers can join from anywhere. The film’s scene is primarily human-scale: hands ink-stained with painstaking precision, long rolls of parchment unrolling like maps, magnified columns of Hebrew text, and interview frames that place the craft within contemporary religious life. Key features include the scribe’s tools — quills, inkwells, and ruled guidelines — and the Torah itself as both object and cultural artifact. Viewers will see archival documents, candid workshop footage, and conversations with practitioners that illuminate the technical steps of writing a Torah and the social shifts that made female scribes visible. Why this matters in New York: the city’s layered Jewish history and active cultural institutions create an audience attuned to both preservation and innovation. The virtual format makes the program accessible to those who travel to New York for cultural itineraries and to local residents exploring how craft, gender, and faith intersect in urban communities. The talk’s value lies in its combination of slow-making detail and sharp context—how a millennia-old ritual adapts when new hands take up the quill. Attend if you’re curious about religious craft, synagogue life, or contemporary Jewish history. Expect a short screening followed by a Q&A with Lauren Greenhall that deepens your understanding of technique and meaning. Practical notes: the screening is online at 6pm ET, pay-what-you-wish; audio-visual clarity is essential for appreciating the fine details, so join from a quiet room with good speakers or headphones. This is a quiet kind of adventure—one measured in letters and lineage instead of miles. It’s ideal for travelers and locals who pair museum visits and walking tours with evening cultural programming, and for anyone who values documentary film as a way to bring close-up craftsmanship and overlooked histories into sharp relief.