Checking, Checking...

Although I finished writing the first amud (column) of the new Torah Friday morning, there was still some work left to do.   Before moving onto a new column, I always  go through the previous column at least twice.    The first sweep of the text is to check for any obvious misspellings or imperfections in the letters.  The second sweep is to remove any flecks or wayward speckles of ink.   These checks are both done with the aide of a good-sized magnifying lens….

Using a Curved Blade to Clean up the Parchment

As I go along, I use a broad, curved blade to gently scrape away anything that has to go.    At this stage, razor blades or X-acto knives are not helpful; they can all-too-easily tear or puncture the klaf (parchment).  Once I’m satisfied with the column, only then do I begin the next one.

The Completed First Amud

  

A Closer View

In the context of the whole project, though, what is the meaning of a single column?

Let us step back for a moment and look at some of numbers associated with making  a Sefer Torah.

Almost all Sifrei Torah written today require 62 sheets of parchment with 3 or 4 columns per-sheet.   Producing that amount of parchment requires the slaughter and processing of over 30 cows!  On these 62 sheets are written over 10,000 lines of text, encompassing 669 paragraphs, which equals 5,888 verses, equaling 79,847 words comprised of 304, 805 letters.   This is all arranged over 245 neat columns.

Just one column requires about 7.5  hours of labor, meaning that  the writing of a Torah scroll necessitates over 1800 hours of detailed labor.   But that is only the writing;  sewing and assembling these 62 sheets can also be time consuming.

For Kehillas Torah Chaim of Dallas, this means that their Sefer Torah is now 1/245  (or, if you prefer, 0.00408163…  or 0.04% )complete.  So, in the beginning, there was quite literally 0.00408163….

Tomorrow I will be writing about the question of how many letters there are in the Torah. In particular, why do our Sages tell us there are 600,000 when we only count (and I’m sure that you’ve all sat down and counted them) 304,805 letters.   Hmmmm….

2 Comments »

1. 

   Because in Gemara Kiddushin “Daf Lamed Amud Aleph or Beis” (can’t remember which, and I don’t have my gemara presently…) The counting of the letters include the “Tah-gim” as well. I will leave it to R’ Bloomenstiel to explain the importance, relevance, and meaning of these “Tah-gim”

   Comment by Yehuda Reynolds — June 29, 2009 @ 2:53 pm

2. 

   I will be putting up an article on taggim in the upcoming few weeks.

   This is a good point, but the problem with counting the taggim, the crowns upon the letters, is that it doesn’t actually get you to 600,000. If we count each “Tagged” letter as 4 letters (the letter plus three taggim), then you get a total of 458,117. Even if you count the individual taggim that have become a custom to put on the Hehs, Dalets, kufs, and beis, then you still only get 514,239.

   Another possible answer to this question of letters is to say that we actually count each letter twice: once for the letter, once for its vowel. Even still, that puts you about 10,000 over. I recently put up a post about this very topic. Good stuff! Y’K for checking in!

   Comment by Rabbi Avraham Chaim Bloomenstiel, Sofer — July 3, 2009 @ 1:40 am

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