Learning to chant from the Torah has long been both a rite of passage and a source of anxiety.

Popular culture has captured this feeling, from the visibly terrified b’nai mitzvah kids in the TV show “Curb Your Enthusiasm” to the anxious preparations in the film “You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah.”

While Torah chanting goes back thousands of years, the way people today can learn how to do it is getting an update. Virtual Tikkun is a digital platform that allows people to practice their portions, or sections of Torah, using images of the actual scroll they’ll be using on the bimah.

Synagogues generally keep several Torah scrolls in rotation, and both b’nai mitzvah students and the adults who chant on Shabbat and holidays don’t always know which scroll they’ll encounter, which can be intimidating and stressful. At home, they traditionally prepare with a standard printed version called a tikkun, but the transition to using the real thing can be a shock.

“Every Torah looks different,” said Rabbi Amanda Russell of San Francisco’s Congregation Beth Sholom. “You have different scripts, different sizes of writing. The words are maybe on different lines, and it would be really hard to prepare if you didn’t know what it looked like ahead of time.”

David Bayer, chair of the ritual committee at the Conservative synagogue, decided two years ago to create a solution to this ongoing issue. Using his background in tech, Bayer led the development and then the release last summer of Virtual Tikkun, which is designed to help people prepare and learn how to leyn, or read, using scans from their synagogue’s actual Torah scrolls.

 

 

Bayer starts by photographing all of the columns in a Torah scroll, then uses artificial intelligence to organize the images. The digital platform not only allows people to practice on the scroll they’ll be using in synagogue, but it also allows synagogues to rotate their Torahs more regularly, without throwing readers off their game.

“In order to keep a Torah healthy, kind of like a car, you have to start it up every once in a while,” Russell said. “If you leave the Torah in the back of the ark, and it hasn’t been unrolled or touched, then it actually gets ‘sicker quicker’ and it doesn’t hold up as well over time.”

Creating or repairing a Torah — all done by hand by trained scribes —  is costly and labor-intensive, as each scroll contains more than 300,000 letters. Russell said she was quoted about $30,000 to repair one of the Torahs back into usable condition, while commissioning a new one can range from $50,000 to $75,000. The most practical solution, Russell said, is to circulate all of the congregation’s scrolls that are considered kosher, or fit for ceremonial use.

As chair of the ritual committee, Bayer cares for Beth Sholom’s 11 Torah scrolls. When he began that position, five were no longer considered kosher for various reasons, including faded letters and tears in the parchment.

“The genesis of the project was the motivation to increase the number of Torahs that we could use, and to really enable our lay Torah readers and our b’nai mitzvah students to be able to practice from the specific scroll that they were going to read from,” said Bayer, who is CEO of Virtual Tikkun, the company he has founded to undertake this work.

The first version of Virtual Tikkun’s platform launched in June 2025. A 2.0 upgrade, which goes live on Wednesday, has several new features, he said.

The platform features a range of learning tools, including the ability to share audio files of tutors and students chanting an individual portion, color-coded trope (cues for chanting) and flash cards. Bayer said that Virtual Tikkun’s mission is to bring Torah-chanting skills and assistance to every community in support of “Jewish continuity and l’dor v’dor,” from generation to generation.

At least one other local synagogue has already begun using the platform. Bayer said Virtual Tikkun is working on building up its client base.

Susan Simon, education director at Conservative Temple Beth Abraham in Oakland, said that before her synagogue started using Virtual Tikkun last year she would regularly take photos of the exact column a student would read from and send the image ahead of time via cellphone. It worked but felt inefficient.

Simon said she’s had students who were so anxious they required multiple rehearsals in person with the Torah scroll. Virtual Tikkun “has the most impact on terrified students,” she said, “because it gives them a measure of confidence we couldn’t necessarily give them before.”