How Debra Band revives a dying Jewish artform

How Debra Band revives a dying Jewish artform

POTOMAC, Md. — Debra Band’s art studio sits at the back of her Maryland home, a room crowded with kosher parchment, jars of 23.75-karat gold leaf, the parrot she recently fostered and the unfinished pages of three books she’s working on simultaneously. It is, by her coy admission, a mess. “It’s chaos,” she said humbly, “that’s what makes it so great.” Earlier this year, the Library of Congress acquired five of Band’s illuminated biblical manuscr…