One of the few places in Torah where all the letters with crowns – שעטנז גץ – are within a few millimetres of each other. Pretty, isn’t it? This one’s in Devarim, 22:11-12:לא תלבש שעטנז צמר ופשתים יחדו: גדלים תעשה לך על ארבע כנפות כסותך אשר תכסה בה.
Mar Gavriel tells us: Most of the world is observing Yom Ha’Atzma’ut (Israel’s Independence Day, that is) on Tuesday, because Yom HaZikaron is the day before Yom Ha’Atzma’ut and when Yom HaZikaron is due to be on a Sunday we push the whole lot up a day – Yom HaZikaron on Monday and Yom Ha’Atzma’ut […]
Hatam Soferet’s inbox today twinkled with forwards of this Washington Post article. Basically, there’s a guy, R’ Youlus, whose shtick is rescuing sifrei Torah from Nazi-stricken Europe – removing them, restoring them to usable condition, and rehousing them in America. (As someone with a personal interest in resurgent European Jewry I have my reservations regarding […]
Generally I like when people share stuff with me. “Have you seen this?” they say, and usually I haven’t and it’s interesting. Thanks, sharers – keep it coming, I much appreciate your thoughtfulness. Sometimes, though, people share jokes, and I’m observing a trend – when total strangers share jokes (sometimes by internet, sometimes by phone), […]
Two friends at Yeshivat Hadar are learning about tzitzit, specifically the extent to which women are permitted* to engage in the mitzvah. One of them comes over to me: “We’re learning about women and tzitzit, and whether women are allowed to make tzitzit, and there’s a famous Tosafot, maybe in Gittin, that talks about that…?” […]
We talk about stretchy letters in Torah, now and again. Here’s a post about stretchy letters in print. You know this icon. In the universal language of word processors it means “right-aligned text.” Lines run level down the right side of the page; if a line doesn’t fit perfectly, there’ll be a little bit of […]
