What is the point of all the scribal laws? Why must the Torah be copied by hand? Why must the sofer endure such a long and arduous process?

The answer to these questions requires us to understand the purpose of the sofer.

Soferim are more than just copyists; they are entrusted with the duty of safeguarding and accurately transmitting the Torah text from generation to generation.  This intense duty of transmission is what the laws of safrus really address, not the mere aspects of transcription.

If the ultimate goal of the copyist is to simply produce a copy of the text, then we could merely use a xerox machine to accomplish our goal.   Alternatively, if you are feeling “old-fashioned,” you could build a robot to scribble out the Torah with quill,  ink, and parchment.

But this is not what the halacha wants of us. The halacha wants the scribe to set his hands, eyes, mind, and heart  upon every single stroke of every single letter of every single word of the Torah.

As the scribe writes, each word must be said aloud.  Additionally, every holy name, before it is written, must be sanctified with the statement: “Behold! I write this for the sake of the Holiness of the Name of G-d.”

Upon completion of a new scroll, every letter must be checked to make sure that its form is correct. Every word must be checked for correct spelling. The layout must be checked to ensure that the text is clearly divided into the requisite number of paragraphs. This process is repeated numerous times before the Torah can be consecrated for ritual use.

Any unrepaired or uncorrected defect  and halacha may requires the scroll to be buried.  The very existence of a defective scroll threatens our mesorah, our chain of transmission, and must be put far beyond the reach of human hand or eye.

To produce a kosher scroll, the sofer must anguish, both in body and soul, over every stroke of the quill…

The halacha require that, in order for the scroll to be valid, it has to be copied letter-by-letter from another scroll.  This “master scroll” must have been checked against numerous other scrolls and proven repeatedly to free from defect.

This master scroll, or Tikkun,   is quite literally the scribe’s bible.   Prior to the printing press, there were a number of Tikkun scrolls in Europe that were famous for their kashrus and pristine layouts.   Scribes would often travel long distances to access these  scrolls to copy from them or to check their own works.

In the 16th century, these master scrolls were reproduced via printing.  Their texts were meticulously type-set, and various instructions were included regarding layouts and arrangement of the open and closed paragraphs (the subject of a future post…).   These printed versions, repeatedly checked against the original master scrolls, were portable and affordable, allowing the sofer to carry out his work with greater speed and efficiency.

Unfortunately, these tikkunim did not solve many of the more complex issues in safrus.   The biggest problem that most soferim wrestle with is layout.   There are a number of ideal features that form the skeleton of the Torah scroll.  For example:

• Each line must fill the width of the column from one end to the other,
• The layout of blank spaces, lines, and paragraphs is very strictly mandated by halacha.  Errors in this department can seriously affect the validity of a scroll,
• Ideally, there are six columns in the Torah that should begin with specific letters,
• Certain special sections (Az Yashir, the Song at the Sea, and Ha’azinu) must be layed out according to even more specialized parameters,
• Ideally, specific groups of lines should be skipped in certain areas and between certain sections of the text.

The challenge of the sofer is to drape the “tissue” of the text over the “skeleton” of formal benchmarks in such a way that all of the requirements of the layout are met.  This is complicated by the fact that the letters are not of uniform size and, therefore, the sofer must adjust the number of letters per each line with great caution.  Sometimes letters may need to be compressed or stretched to make sure that the right text ends up in the right place.

Several decades ago, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Davidowitsch conducted a survey of numerous master scrolls and printed tikkunim, comparing their layouts and proposed solutions to a variety of common scribal problems.

The result of this endeavor was the Davidowitsch Tikkun  - a master scroll written by Rabbi Davidowitsch.

This scroll is simply immaculate.  It impeccably solves problems in layout, spacing, and structure that many (including even the Kesses ha-Sofer, the greatest authority on safrus) thought were irresolvable.   In the 1980’s, the entire scroll was photographed and published as  a printed Tikkun.  Overnight, Rabbi Davidowitsch, already an established Torah scholar and sofer, became a scribal superstar.  Although he is now more-or-less retired, the Rabbi is still considered by many to be the greatest sofer of the past century (or even two centuries), and one of the world’s foremost authorities on safrus.  His tikkun is the gold standard used by almost all soferim for producing Torah scrolls.

Besides reproducing Rabbi Davidowitsch’s marvelous layout of the text, the Tikkun also does the following:

• It is full of footnotes and emendations indicating scribal traditions and  oddities.  These notes  have more or less established the standard for modern Torahs.
• Among the annotations are guides as to which Divine Names must be sanctified before writing, which are sanctified out of doubt, and which names only appear to be divine names, but that aren’t actually.  Knowing the status of these names has a big impact on the writing process and kashrus of the scroll.
• He demonstrates a method for laying out the text so that each column (with the exception of 6 particular columns) begins with the Hebrew letter vov.  This format is known as “vovei amudim.”  Although the vovei amudim layout is considered preferable by many experts, the main manual for scribes, the Kesses ha-Sofer, frowned upon it.  In order to pull off  vovei amudim,  the soferim had to excessively stretch and squish letters at the ends and beginnings of the columns.  The Kesses felt that any benefit of the vovei amudim layout was offset by the contortion of the letter forms.   However, Rabbi Davidowitch’s vovei amudim is simply wonderful.
• Each line is accompanied by notes tabulating the letter-values of the line (check back Thursday for more info on this…) relative to the standard width of the line itself.   Knowing these numbers helps the sofer tremendously to know how to space his script ahead of time so that each line comes out fairly even.  Although this technique has been around for a loooooooong, looooooong time, Rabbi Davidowitsch’s layout creates very conservative and even line-values.

Please check back later  for pictures and samples from the Davidowitsch Tikkun and examples from famous master scrolls….

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