The handwritten Hebrew parchment scroll containing the Five Books of Moses is called a Sefer Torah.
Sefer Torah means “Book of the Torah.” It contains the Torah’s five books—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy—written in Hebrew on parchment. A trained Jewish scribe, called a sofer, copies the text by hand according to traditional rules concerning letters, words, layout, and materials.
The scroll is read publicly in synagogue, with a weekly portion assigned through the annual Torah-reading cycle. Readers use a yad, or pointer, to avoid touching the parchment directly. A Sefer Torah is different from a printed chumash, which commonly includes the Torah along with translations or commentary, and from a siddur, which is a prayer book. If a Torah scroll is damaged, it may require repair by an appropriately trained scribe.