This is based on a talk I gave a few weeks ago, on Shabbat Bereshit. It concerns the reading for the second year of the triennial cycle, which starts in chapter 4, in which God creates beings with plurality, male and female.
זה ספר תולדות אדם ביום ברוא אלקים את האדם בדמות אלקים עשה אותו, זכר ונקבה בראם, ויברך אותם ויקרא את שמם אדם ביום הבראם
This is the book of the generations of mankind. On the day that Elohim created mankind, in the image of elohim he made it; male and female he made them. And he blessed them, and he called their name mankind on the day of their creation.
In the sefer Bet Haverim read from this year, the first letter of the paragraph looks like the image at left, ordinary zayin.
In their new sefer, the first letter looks like the image at right. The zayin has a little curl on its right-hand side.
This new sefer has a lot of little annotations like this. The annotations invite you to look deeper.
One commentator says these may be functioning as delete marks; if you ignore the letters marked up by the tagin, you are left with the singular word El, making the point that although Elohim seems to be a plural word, you should be in no doubt that it is a singular quantity. In context, this could be a commentary on the nature of the beings created by God; although the language suggests that they are plural (compare the interpretation that says originally these beings were multi-gendered dual-body creatures which were separated only at a later date), you should make no mistake that they were actually singular.
Tagin also invite us to think about additions, rather than deletions. What does a set of three tagin bring to mind? Maybe it invites us to look for threes. For instance, look in the verse, at the letters following the three instances of the word adam. Alef-bet, alef-bet, alef-bet. Av, av, av. Three fathers. What other threes come to mind?
We’re asking what might be hinted at by three tagin on top of the regular letters. This might remind us of pardes–peshat, remez, drash, sod–and the three extra exegetical layers which ride above the plain text.
You might ask why all this exegesis is necessary. Why not just write it all out explicitly? Surely that would be easier. Well, one answer is that God was being merciful–has hakadosh barukh hu al mamonam shel yisrael–if it was all written out explicitly, it would be all but impossible to fulfil the mitzvah of ketivah sefer Torah.
Which sounds like a joke, until you consider the Talmud, which is the fifth-century attempt to do just that, write everything down explicitly, and how many complete copies of the Talmud–the central text of rabbinic Judaism–survived the Middle Ages? One. Just one. The bigger the book, the harder it is to ensure its survival.
So the traditions of extra tagin serve as easy-to-write reminders of extra content. Footnote markers, a hint that something extra is going on. The challenge is to remember the footnotes, a challenge which we have largely failed at this point.
So in our verse, what’s going on? To explain one idea, first we need to talk about the mechanics of writing God’s name.
Before writing the combination of letters representing God’s name, a scribe has to have the intention that God is the subject. Consider the letter string alef-lamed; sometimes it means God, sometimes it means a god in general, sometimes it means towards, sometimes it means don’t. Before you write it, you need to know which it is; we say it’s the thought that counts and the scribes’ code takes that literally.
Generally, the meaning is clear from context; it is holy, or it isn’t. But sometimes it isn’t clear. Sometimes it’s ambiguous, and will remain so till the coming of Elijah. In our verse, the first Elohim has the status of definitely-holy, and the second has the status of permanently-ambiguous. Was man really created in the literal image of God?
Consider those three fathers, above; one opinion thinks that the three fathers were created in the literal image of God, but subsequent generations were not. We also find these tagin in the first paragraphs of the first creation story, where three tagin emphasise hu v’lo malakh, hu v;lo saraf, hu v’lo shaliach–words we recognise from the Passover liturgy: He and not an angel; He and not a seraph; He and not a messenger. It’s possible that the tagin here, on the ambiguous Elohim, are a tradition expressing an opinion on the question.
There are a great many threes that three tagin could be hinting at. We’ll finish with another three, the three judges on a bet din. Elohim means judge, and the commentator Sforno says that our verse means mankind was created baal bechira, a master of choice, a possessor of free will. Three tiny lines serve as a powerful reminder of humanity’s capabilities and responsibilities.
Hurricane Sandy
We had Weather here this week. You might have heard something about it in the news. My bit of Manhattan is fine, so am I, and so is your Torah. Despite our apartment building swaying in the wind, which is unnerving because we aren’t Californians and therefore not used to buildings wobbling about.
These scrolls were not so lucky.
These scrolls were in a mandatory evacuation zone in a low-lying part of Brooklyn. The owners decided not to evacuate, or even to move their scrolls up to the second floor despite warnings of once-in-a-lifetime flooding, and this is what happened. The scrolls are ruined and probably cannot be repaired.
(If your scrolls get wet, do not lay them out like this. It will not help. Layer them flat back and forth in zigzags interleaved with kitchen paper and stack heavy weights on top to keep the sheets flat. Cut the seams if necessary.)
Star Apprentice puts it best: “We had a fire drill last week, and I noticed that it’s no-one’s job to evacuate the Torahs. It would be bad if we had a fire and the Torahs got burned or wet. The fire drill plan should include evacuating the Torahs. I’m going to do something about that.”
This is a post first for CBH, my current client, but I’m cross-posting because plenty of other Jews read this. If you find the above image upsetting, but your fire drill, hurricane plan, or other natural disaster preparation routine doesn’t feature your Torah scrolls, you should be asking yourselves why.
Noach and water damage
In this week’s parasha, water covers the face of the earth, so I’m going to share some pictures of various kinds of damage water can do to Torah scrolls.
Water damage happens from leaky roofs, but it also happens from sweat and spit, and from being stored in damp or humid locations. Wrapping a scroll tightly in plastic is a bad idea, because whatever moisture is trapped inside the plastic (and there will be some) will not be able to dry off.
If you’re very lucky, your water damage will only make the letters a little bit fuzzy and hard to read.
This is damage from sweat droplets. Fortunately, the rabbi had a tissue handy, and mopped up most of the sweat right away, before it had time to soak into the parchment. Multiple letters still needed repairing; when ink spreads such that letters touch each other, they’re not kosher any more and have to be repaired.
Water damage often causes ugly discolouration, and sometimes there is not much we can do about that. Also, sometimes the words are impossible to repair, because the water has made ink spread all through the parchment.
Here, water damage has caused the parchment to wrinkle. Removing wrinkles can sometimes be attempted, but it isn’t cheap. Wrinkles are bad for the parchment; they make it much more likely to tear. They also make life hard for the reader.
This sefer was stored for a long time in a damp location. The coating on the back of the scroll stuck to the letters, and when the scroll was opened, the letters peeled off. This scroll will have to be mostly rewritten.Dots in parashat Nitzavim (yes I know it’s almost Vayelech now, sorry)
In parashat Nitzavim we read:
הַנִּסְתָּרֹת לַיקֹוָק אֱלֹהֵינוּ וְהַנִּגְלֹת לָנוּ וּלְבָנֵינוּ עַד עוֹלָם לַעֲשׂוֹת אֶת כָּל דִּבְרֵי הַתּוֹרָה הַזֹּאת:
Concealed acts are the responsibility of the Lord our God [to judge]; but overt acts are the responsibility of us and our children unto eternity, to carry out all the words of this Torah.
In the Torah scroll, it appears thus:
Let’s start with the dot over the ע of עד, unto. Why is only half the word dotted?
עד is a word suggesting continuity, time extending uninterrupted forever. A dot on one of the word’s only two letters breaks it up, brings the continuity to a stop. We are reminded of the distinction between this world and the world to come – the words לנו ולבנינו, us and our children, are obscured as if to say, we may not know the secret things now, but in the world to come they will be revealed. We simply have to do the best we can now with what we know.
If we don’t read the phrase לנו ולבנינו, us and our children, the verse starts “Concealed acts are the responsibility of the Lord our God, and overt acts also.” While the children of Israel are still in the wilderness, they are not wholly responsible beings; God is concerned with both their public and private acts and will dispense judgement, like a parent. Once they cross over the Jordan, though [Rashi], into their promised homeland, they have to take collective ownership of their actions. Now they are adults with autonomy. They have a responsibility to maintain law and order among themselves as best they can.
This is the longest run of dots in the Torah, eleven of them, and immediately before the dots is an eleven-letter phrase – ליהוה אלהינו. As we’ve seen, we don’t ever erase God’s name. We avoid even a suggestion of doing such a thing, so we wouldn’t put those eleven dots above ליהוה אלהינו. But the association is there; is it coincidence that there are exactly the right number of dots for ליהוה אלהינו, put in right next to the phrase, on the next available words? What if we read the verse without God? Then it reads “Concealed acts and overt acts are the responsibility of us and our children unto eternity…”
This means that we have responsibility for each other, helping each other obey the rules and do mitzvot – and we also have responsibility for ourselves. Each individual has to keep the laws, technical and ethical, as best they can, in public and in private. God is still there, to forgive us if we do something bad completely unknowingly, but we have to do the best we can by ourselves.
Not much Torah writing this week
But lots of Torah repair.
It’s Elul, the season of repentance. It’s perhaps no coincidence that at this time of year, many communities want to get their Torah scrolls in good working order.
This involves checking through each and every letter of the scroll, making sure that it’s kosher, and if we can, making it beautiful as well. Elul, for comparison, involves checking through your relationships, repairing broken ones and strengthening existing ones.
To this end, this week I and my apprentices:
* worked on CBH’s Goldman scroll
* packaged up CBH’s Rosh Chodesh scroll for shipping home
* spent two days at a synagogue in Queens, fixing a scroll on-site
* worked on a scroll from Florida
* almost finished a scroll from Indiana
* completed and returned a local scroll
* put new atzei chayim on another local scroll.
I also moved house on Tuesday. I’m still in Manhattan, but further south now, on the Upper West Side.
Shabbat Rosh Chodesh
It’s Shabbat Rosh Chodesh, so there’s an extra Torah reading this week.
I bet most of you reading this have two Torah scrolls in your shul. There’s the one you read from every week, and there’s the Rosh Chodesh Torah. It gets used on Rosh Chodesh and festivals for the seasonal readings, and never gets used for anything else. It’s probably the heavy one, or the old one people don’t really like using.
Talmud study:
המפקיד ס”ת אצל חבירו גוללו כל שנים עשר חדש פותחו וקורא בו אם בשבילו פתחו אסור סומכוס אומר בחדש שלשים יום בישן שנים עשר חדש ר”א בן יעקב אומר אחד זה ואחד זה שנים עשר חדש
If one deposited a sefer Torah with his fellow, he rolls it every twelve months, opens it and reads from it. If he opened it for his own needs, he may not read in it. Sumchus says one rolls a new Sefer Torah every thirty days and an old one every twelve months; R’ Eliezer ben Yaakov says whether new or old, they must be rolled every twelve months.
Bava Metzia 29b; the Talmud is talking about how you keep objects in good order if you’ve been entrusted with their care. To keep a sefer Torah in good order, you must roll it from end to end at least once a year and possibly once a month, and reading causes wear and tear.
People who repair Torah scrolls can always identify a Rosh Chodesh Torah. The Rosh Chodesh section is in unbelievably bad condition, like this:
Sorry for the fuzzy image–if you can see it, the letters are flaking off and the section is in no way kosher.
It is possible to repair damage like this, but it is time-consuming, expensive, and not especially long-lived.
You should be rotating your scrolls. If the big one is the Rosh Chodesh Torah this year, make it the main reading Torah next year (and I don’t care if no-one can lift it; do you want a pasul Torah on your hands? No you don’t). If you’ve got spare ones, get the bar mitzvahs or the ritual committee to roll one of them each month and bring them into the rotation next year.
If you’ve just commissioned a shiny new scroll (hello, CBH!), make it the reading scroll this year and the Rosh Chodesh scroll next year and roll it end-to-end every month to keep it healthy. Otherwise in fifty years it will look like the one in the picture, and you do not want that to happen.
Work scene
I forget why I wanted her safely out of the way, but this worked nicely.
A final post on proofreading
I’ve given quite a lot of space to proofreading, lately, by way of emphasising that proofreading is a terrifically important part of writing a sefer. By way of closing this subject, I’m just going to draw your attention to the combination of tradition and technology we use here.
Some people find it very disconcerting that we use a computer at all. But a computer has a lot of the right skills; it’s a lovely example of using technology to take a traditional process and improve the way we do it.
Other people ask why there is any need for humans at all; “why can’t the computer do it all?” Fortunately, the computer has limitations.
For instance, the letters are very slightly three-dimensional; a human, with stereo vision, can tell the difference between ink and shadow, and a scanner can’t always. Sometimes it’ll interpret a shadow as a crucial fine line, and report a letter kosher when it really isn’t.
So a scan is an excellent tool – I think it’s one of the finer syntheses of technological development and ancient ritual – but it does not replace all the other proofreading tools we use, and it is not a substitute for hard work and knowing your stuff. We still need the subtlety which humans can bring to the task.
Final fact: proofreading takes about 1/12 of the total project time.
Computer-aided proofreading, type 2
The other form of computer checking involves much more sophisticated software, and further reduces the chance of human error. In the process we’ve just been talking about, the letters were fed to me automatically, but I still had to use my brain to identify them and see that they were kosher. In this process, there’s barely any brain involved at all.
In this process, the operator uses a hand-held scanner to get the columns of text into the computer. Then it is run through OCR software – very clever software, which not only recognises letter glyphs but can also be taught to handle variations in glyphs caused by its being hand-written. Because it is a computer, it can also be taught some of the laws of whether a letter is kosher or not, so it can apply those mechanically to each glyph and flag up any doubtful cases.
Finally, the OCR output is compared to a Torah text, and any discrepancies are flagged up along with the doubtfully-kosher ones. A report with all problems is generated and given back with the scroll to the sofer, who then goes through the list and fixes everything on it.
Scan report
Here’s a piece of the scan report from my first Torah. Column 003, says the first entry on this report, which starts “Vayomer Adonai Elohim” – one comment. Line 21 (Bereshit 3:5), problem, thus: extra letter vav in the word “mimenu,” where it should say “…yodea Elohim ki b’yom akhalkhem mimenu v’nifkedu eineikhem…” and then in the picture you can see it’s got “v’mimenu,” for some reason or other.
I think I probably started writing the mem, got distracted mid-stroke, forgot I’d already started it, and started it over, but I don’t remember now.
Computer-aided proofreading: type 1
When proofreading, you need to make sure every letter is present; one letter too many or too few invalidates the sefer.
One method of proofreading involves two people; a Reader has a tikkun and a Sofer has the klaf. The Reader reads the letters from the tikkun one by one, and the Sofer checks them off.
Proofreaders know that one of the problems of proofreading is you often see what you expect to be there, not what actually is there. Checking off a string of letters fed to you by a reader more or less eliminates this problem.
There’s still chance for human error though – misspeaking, mishearing, losing the place, saying “hang on a minute” when marking an error and needing to re-establish the place afterwards, going too fast and missing bits, going too slow and wasting time.
This is why I had a friend write me a program which plays the part of the Reader. He called it the scribomatic, which I find vastly pleasing. I have the Torah text in my computer; I copy and paste in the portion of text I want to check, the scribomatic reads the letters one by one, and I check them off on the klaf as we go.
A funny thing about checking the letters like this is that you completely lose track of where you are in the Torah.
When you’re writing, you say the words out loud as you’re going along. You’re going very slowly, so you might forget what was happening a few paragraphs before, but you know what’s happening in the part you’re writing.
When you hear the letters coming at you, one after the other, and you’re focusing on them as individual letters and not as words, as a string and not as a text, you don’t have that awareness. At least, I don’t. Try it with a friend and a lump of English sometime, see what you make of it. It’s very interesting, I think – yet another perspective on the Torah text that I wouldn’t have suspected was there.