The original stone tablets were written by the finger of God, etzba Elohim. Nowadays we write their less cumbersome representations, the Torah-scrolls, with quills, but what most people today don’t know is that ideally you don’t use a quill to write sifrei kodesh. You’re supposed to use the index finger of your dominant hand — […]
In honour of its being Adar, I give you Dog Torah. I have a puppy. Parts of her are tan-coloured like parchment, and parts of her are black and shiny like Torah ink. She likes to squirm around on the couch. I am a sofer stam. Now read on…
Tuesday night, I was teaching at my scribe school, as is my wont on Tuesday nights. Three-quarters of the room was speaking Yiddish. Now, I posted recently about the surreal experience of being at a party of young, egal-type Jews where three-quarters of the room was speaking Yiddish. That was strange, yes. But having three-quarters […]
Tears in Torahs are scary, people. I know. You see a big tear, you want to STICK IT BACK TOGETHER REALLY HARD so it WON’T TEAR ANY MORE. Nobody could be calm about finding this in their Torah, for instance: But for the love of all things holy, don’t whip out the duck tape and […]
Some repairs you don’t need a sofer for. You just need wood glue. Yes, folks – if your rollers are falling apart, get yourself some wood glue and jolly well stick them back together. Just don’t get the glue on the Torah, but you figured that out already. No scribal training required.
Ever wonder what makes heavy Torahs so heavy? Size is part of it, of course. Before Good Electric Lighting and Universal Spectacles (in the eyecare sense, not in the entertainment sense), having bigger letters helped the reader. Line height these days is regularly 8mm, only two-thirds the size of the letters on older, bigger Torahs. […]
Places where ink has popped off and only the shadows are left. Clicky to see bigger. The shadows don’t count, by the by, so if your letters look like this, they are pasul and need fixing. These kinds of pesulim are funny. They really do just pop off. Pop! and they’re gone. Sometimes if it’s […]
December 31, 2010 – 09:05
This is one of my favourite letter-halakhot, from the rules of how to make straight nun: אות נו”ן פשוטה תואר צורתה כמו זיי”ן וג’ תגין על ראשה אך שהיא ארוכה כשיעור שתהא ראויה להעשות נו”ן כפופה אם תכפפנה Its form is like a zayin, with three tagin on its head, but it is long, such […]
December 10, 2010 – 11:10
In my email: Hi Jen! I hope it’s okay if I ask you a quick question — the school I’m working at just paid a bunch to have our Torah repaired — lots of letter were flaking off. The sofer said this was due to humidity and…mentioned something about silicate powder, but we don’t know […]
Been meaning to write about this since 2009…one of my colleagues in Israel asked the Masorti movement for their official position on lady scribes. Their response is here. It’s in Hebrew, so I’m posting a summary of the main points: * The Gemara and many major halakhic decisors say it’s a problem for women to […]
