Today I finished columns 12 & 13.  That takes me halfway through the 4th yeria (page) which I hope to finish after Shabbos.   That places us at a little over 6% completion, page wise.

Here are some more pics of these columns:

Tops of Columns 12 & 13

Bottoms of Columns 12 & 13

As always, please remember that it is your generous support that makes this project possible.  Please help us take this Sefer Torah to completion by sponsoring a day of writing…
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Today I got well into the 4th page -

There were some odd problems with the first column and the writing came out below my normal standard of acceptability.  I debated rewriting it for a long time before deciding, in the interests of time, on correcting and rewriting only the parts that bothered me the most…

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Put the finishing touches on the third parchment sheet today and started on the fourth.   This yeria takes us through the flood & drunkenness of Noach (Noah) and up to the birth of Avram.

All-in-all, the writing is going well, but the klaf here exhibited a few oddities.  In particular it was prone to smudges – which indicates that it is a little too moist.  I was able to clean off most of it off.  These sorts of problems are always par for the course when working with non-synthetic materials.

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In this final (at least for now…) post on taggim we are going to take a look at some unusual examples of taggim and, at the end, some of the deeper reasons for these special “crowns”.

Example #1

These examples of decorated taggim are from a 17th century German Torah scroll in the possession of Yitzchok Resiman, a well-known sofer in New York.

Most of the taggim throughout the scroll are simple, tiny lines without heads (not the “zayins” we described previously).   However, the taggim at the tops of several columns at at the beginnings of several section are embellished, appearing almost like small heraldic shields. 

And a closer view…

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Rav Yehuda said in the name of Rav: “When Moshe ascended to the heavens he    found the Holy One, Blessed is He, sitting and binding taggim, crowns, to letters.

Moshe said before him: ‘Master of the World, who is holding you back from giving the Torah just as it is?’

He replied to Moshe: ‘There is a certain man who will exist in the future, at the end of many generations, Akiva ben Yosef  [Rabbi Akiva] is his name, who will expound mountains of halachos from each and every point…’” …

… Said Rava: “Seven letters require three ziyunin [taggim] each.  And they are: Sha’atnez Getz“

When Moshe arrived in the heavens, he found that G-D had already completed his Sefer Torah.  Does Moshe’s question, “Master of the World, who is holding you back from giving the Torah just as it is?” imply that the Torah was fit to be given even without affixing taggim/crowns to the letters?

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