In short – the amount of time it takes to produce them. Every bit of a pair of tefillin is made by hand, and the longer it takes to do, the more it costs. The biggest price factor of a set of tefillin is the parchments. They have a lot of writing on them, and […]
November 24, 2010 – 12:57
http://soferet.webs.com/aboutme.htm Oy… A messianic soferet (who thinks the plural of “soferet” is “soferetim”). Okay, people. This is a good example of why you need to know who your scribe was. This person’s work will probably look exactly the same as a Jew’s work. Looking at the site, you might think it was completely okay – […]
November 23, 2010 – 12:41
For what it’s worth, this is the paper I’m presently recommending to my students. Scribes write on parchment, but parchment is mad expensive, and it’s foolish to take your first tottery strokes with a quill on the most expensive medium available. Much better to get started on paper. But what sort of paper? You don’t […]
The Czech Memorial Scrolls were originally collected up by the Jews of Prague, in the wake of Nazi devastation. As the Jews of Bohemia disappeared, the Prague Jews collected up their scrolls to keep them safe, hoping to give them back to their owners after the war. But their owners were all murdered – and […]
I get emails like this on average twice a month: If you have advice about what I should do with my ancient tefillin, that would be great. They were my great-grandfather’s and I would love to use them, but they are tiny, and the man I talked to at [Big Judaica Store] told me that […]
How many lines to a column? It varies. Torah scrolls tend not to have fewer than 42 lines per column. Some Megillot will have eleven lines per column, so as to have the Sons of Haman occupy a column to themselves but still have only one on each line. The Keset ha-Sofer: It is the […]
This time last year, we had Quill Month – seventeen posts about quills. My new cohort of students is causing me to have more to say about quills, but first – here’s all the old posts. Of course, I suggest reading them all. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 […]
Adhesive creep on a sefer Torah. The seam reinforcements are glued on; over time, the glue Creeps out from where it was originally put. Being sticky, the creepy glue sticks to a) other things b) dirt. Here, the glue from the reinforcement on the right-hand side of the picture has stained the Torah’s margin, on […]
A very Rodeph-Sholom couple of weeks. Rodeph Sholom, for those not intimately familiar with Manhattan’s Upper West Side Jewish Scene, is a Reform synagogue of epic proportions, with after-school religious school program, and eponymous Reform day school a few blocks away. I have the good fortune to visit them relatively often. Week before last I […]
Mazal tovs to the Women’s Torah Project on finishing their Torah! “The first Torah written and embellished by an international community of women,” as they say. I’ve written three Torahs at this point, so I know well how nice it feels to finish writing a Torah. The Women’s Torah Project started about ten years ago […]
