Tag Archives: big and small letters

DRBR 15: In which the Years are Marked

March 5, 2013 – 14:14

DR8-R12b is a Tribute to Nathan Marcus Adler, from the Jewish community of Hanover. (Check out Wikipedia; he has an epic hat, and even more epic sideburns.) The Tribute is dated 1879, the fiftieth anniversary of his ordination (according to the JTS catalogue). As well as the numerical date, it has a nice Hebrew chronogram: […]

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from the Torah repair mines

May 19, 2011 – 21:58

Isn’t this sweet? It’s the little letter aleph in “Vayikra,” but it’s a particularly tiny version, where the height of the whole letter aleph is same as the width of the quill used for the other letters. The regular letters in this sefer, by the way, were 7mm high. Huge!

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Another post from the Torah repair mines

January 18, 2011 – 16:06

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. […]

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Little Tet, Big Tet; Eicha and Kohelet

October 13, 2010 – 17:21

In Little Letters in Eicha, parts one and two, I talked about lamed, ayin, and tet. The little lamed was serving as a reminder-flag, telling you to recall other, relevant, words beginning with lamed. The little ayin had to do with numerical symbolism. The little tet had numerical symbolism and reminder-flagging, all of it connected […]

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Little Letters in Eicha, part 1

September 16, 2010 – 13:40

I’ve not posted much on the Big and Little Letters in Torah, have I? And now I’m posting on the Little Letters in Eicha – well, I’m between Torahs at the moment, and indulging in a spate of megillot, Eicha amongst them, which has something to do with it. 1:12 (Sofer Boyfriend wrote this one.) […]

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