Our modern Torah scrolls differ significantly from ancient Torah scrolls.   For example, Today’s seforim are written on klaf (parchment), while ancient scrolls were written on gvil (sheets of leather).

Another feature of ancient scrolls is the presence of unusual, additional, or altered taggim and/or letter forms.   These unusual features were almost always predicated upon kabbalistic traditions and reasoning…

Examples of Odd Taggim and Letter Forms From the Ancient Sefer ha-Taggim

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Amud 18 - click to enlarge view

Column 18

Here are pictures from columns 16 and 17.   I hope to have this yeria completed by the middle of this week.  I am stretching it out a bit because I am awaiting a shipment of new parchment sometime around then… 

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While we do not place vowel markings in a Torah scroll, there is a tradition to place dots over the letters of certain words in ten verses:

• Bereishis (Genesis) – 16:5; 18:9; 19:33; 33:4; 37:12.

• Bamidbar (Numbers) – 3:39; 9:10; 21:30; 29:15;

• Devarim (Deuteronomy) – 29:28

What is the purpose of these dots?

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Shalom, all!

Here are some pictures from today’s writing – there are a few lines left in order to reach today’s quota, but this is the progress thus far.   A friend sent me an interesting question today, asking why the lines of writing, and even some of the constituent strokes of the letters, don’t look perfectly straight in the photos posted.

Under the heat of my drafting lamp and of my arms on the parchment, the parchment wrinkles and warps.  So, in the photos. you are not seeing erratic lines on a flat surface, rather you are seeing straight lines on an erratic surface…

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