Creative writing

I don't really have much time to post, but I finished the Eicha I was writing and am now in the proofreading stage. Safrut usually isn't associated with creativity. You basically copy letter for letter and if you try to play games on your own the work becomes worthless. Last week I found a repeated word in the first column and that's where the creativity came in.

Ignore the x in the margin. That was a different error already fixed. This picture will also be used for a later post on chok Tochos. On the right side towards the middle of the picture you will see the word אני and a smudge. The words אלה אני were written there before though I don't have pictures of the rest of the process. I had to erase everything, and then rewrite אני leaving an unsightly and almost certainly passul space. The solution: See that ב right after אני? Well...

Still unsightly, now kosher. So, now you know. Safrut does involve creative writing.

Modern day applications of an old story

Every scribe is familiar with, and sometimes over-fond of telling the following story from the Talmud Bavli, Sotah 20a (my translation):

Rabbi Yehuda related the following in the name of Shmuel about Rabbi Meir (more on him next week). Once I was mixing ink and Rabbi Akiva asked me my trade. I replied that I am a scribe to which Rabbi Akiva responded "My son, be very careful for your work is Divine and you may come to leave out a letter or add an extra one and destroy the entire world.

Sofrim, in particular authors of books on safrus, like this story because it illustrates the responsibility of the position. The sofer, especially in our story before the advent of printing, was responsible for faithfully transmitting scripture (and tradition as well) to the next generation with absolute fidelity. Today, of course, most of our books are printed and the sofer's work is almost entirely for ritual use but textual accuracy is still paramount. A couple days ago I was, as halacha requires, copying letter-for-letter out of a Tikkun Sofrim or official copyist's guide.

Here is the text of Eicha 3:33:

כי לא ענה מלבו, ויגה בני-איש.

Here is a picture of my copyist's guide:

Note the missing vav

 Trusting the sofer who made this copy, I copied letter for letter without checking and did not even suspect a mistake until I showed it to someone much more familiar with the text who picked up on it right away. This is the kind of error that can go undetected for years and even -- as I found out the hard way -- make its way into "official" texts. Fortunately there was no harm done as I was able to add the missing vav without much trouble but I learned a lesson about picking up just any old Tikkun and got a good scare about the responsibility to triple check everything. Somebody might copy from it one day.

Some thoughts on Megillat Eicha

 I'm currently copying Megillat Eicha (technical post with pictures to follow) and I keep coming across quotes that seem very out of place in the “Book of Lamentations”. Some of them are taken as the words to very happy and upbeat jewish songs. The second-to-last verse of the book is the well-known השיבנו ה אליך ונשובה. In Chapter 3 (which I am writing now) there is actually a good sized passage that sounds nothing like mourning: “This I recall and my soul is calm. I remind myself of this, therefore I have hope: That the kindness of God is infinite – that his mercy never ends...” and it goes on in this vein for a while. Megillat Eicha is composed of four elegies followed by a prayer for redemption. Each of the elegies contains verses like this, mostly towards the end. These are not lamentations. They are ecstatic praises that belong in one of the Hallelujah sections of Psalms.

I think these interjections can tell us something about the way Jeremiah viewed Jewish mourning. Eicha is the essential textbook on Jewish mourning much more so than Job. Job was a good man (or character, see Bava Basra 15) to whom bad things happened. Jeremiah is a prophet of Israel teaching us how to mourn. Job suffered in silence until he could no longer bear it and he broke down and challenged God angrily, who answered him in kind. Jeremiah cries immediately. The book begin with an expression of shock and loss – “how could this have happened”. That is the central theme from which Megillat Eicha takes it's name, literally The Scroll of “How?!”

Because Jeremiah begins with a human response to loss instead of trying to be superhuman and failing, his faith does not break like Job's does. At the end of each chapter he can still declare (1:18) צדיק הוא ה כי פיהו מריתי or pray for relief in 2:20 from the same God he calls an enemy in 1:4. Eicha, like a lot of things in Judaism is a paradox.

Next post will be less depressing, I promise.