December 30, 2011 – 13:49
I wanted to do you a post about why there aren’t any vowels or musical notation-marks in a sefer Torah, but when I came to study the subject, I realised it’s a good deal more complicated than can fit into one post. It seemed to require a brief history of vowel-marks, which in turn required […]
December 16, 2011 – 14:54
I’ve been neglecting you a bit, I’m afraid. This is because I’ve been posting regular posts for my current Torah client at their special blog, and I haven’t had energy to do two lots of posts or to set up proper cross-posting. Check out last week’s post A single mistake invalidates the entire sefer Torah […]
You’re merrily checking through a sefer Torah, one in which the scribe tends to underestimate his lines, and has to stretch at the ends to compensate (lines 1, 2, 6, 7). And you see a chunk (lines 3, 4, 5) of squishied-up writing. Why? This usually happens when you accidentally leave words out. Calligraphers have […]
This Purim, I was commissioned to write a megillah for the Abramson Center for Jewish Life, and not just create a megillah, but also a case for it to live in. The Center’s rabbi asked if I could make a design that drew on the Center’s existing artwork, and that’s what you see above. The […]
February 12, 2011 – 20:31
What happens when you let the nose on your dalet get out of control: it turns into an elephant.
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…
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 […]
September 17, 2010 – 14:27
Little Letters in Eicha, part 1 3:36 לעות אדם בריבו אדני לא ראה To subvert a man in his cause, the LORD approveth not. Tzvi Ron in Sefer Katan u-Gadol again (trans. G. Wasserman): “The small ‘ayin in the word לעות (verse 3:36) is explained as a reference to the numerical value of the letter, […]
