Today's Writing!

Am back into the full swing of writing now that my back is working properly again.  To ensure that I can continue to write comfortably, I built a new writing table out of birch.   The design is based upon one that I found in an old book on scribal arts.

The angle and height of the surface along with the cut-out part in the middle make it much easier to remain sitting upright while working.

Middle Six Lines of Amud 29 - Click to Enlarge!

Unfortunately, I suffered some terrible back problems over the past few months and had to curtail my writing.   After a good deal of physical therapy and medication, I’m easing back into writing and posting.

I am a little behind schedule now, but not badly so.   Sigh.

Now… where were we…. aha!  The tikkun…

Here is a  view of the Davidowitsch Tikkun (click to enlarge):

View of the Tikkun - Click for Full Size

I have inserted the red circles and numbers so that we can easily navigate the page together.

The left page is a facsimile of R’ Davidowitsch’s actual writing from his master scroll.   On the right side is a printed version of the same Torah text with all of the vowels and cantillation marks inserted.

Starting with Section #1 – These numbers indicate the particular line within the column.  For convenience, the 42-line columns are broken up across two pages with lines 1 to 21 on the first page and lines 22 to 42 on the second.    Since most new Torah scrolls are written using this tikkun, soferim now have a common way of referencing their work (i.e. "column x, line y").

Section # 2 – These Hebrew letters indicate the column number (keep in mind that Hebrew letters are also used to write numbers).  In this example, the letters are Lamed-Vov, or 36.   So, this page represents the first 21 lines of column 36.

Section # 3 – This is the name of the parsha.  Originally, the Torah was not divided into chapters and versus as it is now.   The chapter/verse division of the “Old Testament” was originally a Christian invention.  That the Jews adopted in the middle ages (the earliest Jewish manuscript using chapter/verse divisions dates from c. 1330).     The prevalent historical theory is that the Jews adopted these designations as a result of forced disputations. The Rabbis  unfortunate  enough to get roped into these debates had to be fluent in the Christian’s system of reference in order to argue effectively.

However, Jews traditionally divided the Torah into 54 sections, one or two of which is read per week.  Section # 3 is the name of the portion to which our segment of writing belongs.

Section # 4 – Rachav ha-Shura: The Width of the Line – these numbers are what make the Sofer’s tikkun so unique.   If a quill is sized properly, then one can fit 62 yuds side-by-side across one line of a column.  Therefore, we think of a line as being 62 yuds wide.   Now, with a few exceptions (such as between paragraphs), the entire length of the line must be filled from start to finish.    The Beis Yosef YD 275 explains that each letter of the Aleph Beis is a certain number of yuds wide as well.   For example, a vov is 1 yud width.  A ches is 2 yud-widths, while a shin is 3 yud-widths.   Ideally we try to fit exactly 62-yuds-worth of letters in each line.  That way, all the letters will fit perfectly without having to stretch or squish anything; each one will remain in its proper proportion and easily fill the line.   However, because you can’t cut words in half, add or drop letters at will, sometimes one will not have enough letters to fill the line and you will have to stretch or squish a little to make everything fit.  These numbers on the side guide the sofer as to how much he will need to adjust (stretch/squish) if he has to0 few or too many letters for the line.

For example, look at line 1 – the rachav ha-shura is Yud Aleph, which stands for yeser 1 – 1 extra – meaning that the total width of the letters in this line is 1 more than the 62-yud ideal, meaning that the sofer has to constrict his script slightly.

Now look at lines 7, 8, and 13 – the rachav ha-shura here is Shin-Tov – meaning Shalem ve-Tam – whole and complete.  In other words, the total yud-widths-worth of letters we are to write in that line tallies 62 exactly.    So, the sofer only needs in these lines to make the letters in their proper proportions and everything should go swimmingly.

Lines 5 and 11, though, are ches-dalet, an abbreviation for choser 4, lacking four.  This means that we only have 59 yud-widths of letters.  Therefore we will have to stretch the writing a little to fill the line.

Knowing by how much a line is lacking or overfilled is invaluable to planning your writing and producing a nice, even script.

Rabbi Davidowitsch’s legendary skill as a sofer is that he can proportionally stretch and squish all the letters in a line so subtly  that one can barely tell when he has had to manipulate anything.   Compare the letters of line 11 with those of line 21, and you will see that line 11’s letters are broader and "breathe" more than the letters in line 21, which are a little narrower and close.   The reason is that line 11 is lacking 4 yuds, thus requiring stretching, while line 11 has 5 extra yuds, requiring squishing.

Now, you may have seen some letters stretched very looooooooooooooong in some Torahs.  This is because the sofer has tried to make up for lacking yud-widths all in one letter rather than dividing up the elongation among all the letters of the line.

Section # 5 – the small superscript kufs here indicate the word below is a divine name and must be verbally sanctified prior to writing.  Throughout the tikkun, one will also find a superscript samekh (indicating that there is a dispute as to whether the word is a divine name) or a ches (indicating that the word looks like a divine name, but is not actually such).   These three designations are VERY important to know – a mistake in understanding which names are divine can render an entire Torah scroll worthless.  We will do divine names in a future post.

Section # 6 – Again, the name of the parsha.

Section # 7 – is the Chapter number (31, in this part)

Section # 8 is the book of the Torah, which is Bereishis, or Genesis in our example.

A large part of being a sofer is simply learning to interpret the tikkun and copy from it swiftly and with complete accuracy.

Before I embark on a new section in my tikkun I first read through the page and highlight anything tricky (i.e. very lacking or overfilled lines, divine names, dots over letters, etc.) with bright yellow just ot make sure that nothing catches me by surprise!

The 7th Yeria - All Done!

The seventh yeria is all done ! Everything went pretty much as expected – no real surprises.

You may notice that the writing looks  closer in some sections here that it has in previous yerios.  This is because this yeria contains a preponderance of yeser lines (lines that have more letters in them than they are intended to accommodate – see Monday’s post for more info…)

This sheet covers a lot of significant events in the Torah.  Avraham, following the passing of Sarah, orders his servant to seek out a wife for his son, Yitzchok.   Yitzchok Marries, and has children of his own: Yaakov and Eisav.   The yeria ends with Eisav spurning his birthright.

Enjoy these photos and check back on Monday for more posts…

The Second Column... Eliezer Meets Rivkah and the Family of Besuel...

Detail of the 2nd Column

Avraham Takes Keturah as his Wife...

Eisav Spurns the Birthright, and Yitzchok Travels to Gerar

Checking, Fixing, Tagging...

Long night of checking the 7th yeria, doing some corrections, and adding in taggim where needed to wrap it up.   By tomorrow afternoon the entire 7th yeria should be done and I will post some pics.

The Second part of the post in the Tikkun is still forth coming – check back tomorrow for more!

My "Gloopy" Alef

The 7th yeria was just going swimmingly – no quill issues, good clean klaf, and then:

Blorp!

-  the quill just belched forth this massive amount of ink and my beautiful Alef  turned into, well, what you see above.

Usually, after dipping the quill in the ink, one can drain off the excess by touching the underside of the quill gently to the side of the inkwell and holding it there for a moment.

However, one in a rare while a tiny bubble forms inside the quill that, upon popping, results what you see above.   Sigh.

Time to shave, scrape, sand, erase, score and rewrite.

At least it’s only 1 letter!

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….

As always, we appreciate your sponsorship and support in this important and meaningful endeavor. For more information on sponsorship opportunities, click HERE.

Check back tomorrow for a fascinating look into the Tikkun ha-Soferim…

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