Give it another try...

A lot has happened since I last posted here. New job, new apartment, etc. and both the Safrus and the blog fell by the wayside for a bit. I plan on writing and posting more this year, we'll see how that goes.

For now, I have some pictures that someone at Mi Yodeya asked me for. These pictures come from a partial Sefer Torah I have. The script has been identified by experts as South German/Czech from around the 1850s give or take. I was asked for pictures of the sections used in tefillin. Unfortunately, my scroll begins somewhere in Vayikra so I could only get the last two. Here they are below in high resolution because my sister was having fun with a rented SLR.

Beginning of Shema. Note the clearer taggin on Shema relative to the rest of the page

End of Shema. Note the strictly-Rambam paragraph break

The last parsha. Again, note the paragraph break.

No Peace for Pinchas

פִּינְחָס בֶּן-אֶלְעָזָר בֶּן-אַהֲרֹן הַכֹּהֵן, הֵשִׁיב אֶת-חֲמָתִי מֵעַל בְּנֵי-יִשְׂרָאֵל, בְּקַנְאוֹ אֶת-קִנְאָתִי, בְּתוֹכָם; וְלֹא-כִלִּיתִי אֶת-בְּנֵי-יִשְׂרָאֵל, בְּקִנְאָתִי לָכֵן, אֱמֹר:  הִנְנִי נֹתֵן לוֹ אֶת-בְּרִיתִי, שָׁלוֹם

Pinhas son of Elazar son of Aaron the Kohen turned My wrath away from Israel through My zealotry which he exercised among them and I did not destroy Israel. Therefore I hereby grant him My covenant of peace. (free translation)

The vav in the word "Shalom" is famously written with an intentional crack, but that will not be the subject of this post. Instead we will talk about the practicalities of Pinchas and why he doesn't get much peace after all.

The maftir readings for all Jewish holidays occur in Parshat Pinchas. Most established congregations have at least two Torah scrolls, one for the regular reading and one for the special readings when a second scroll is required. Naturally this second scroll is constantly being rolled to Pinchas and then moved around within the parasha. This leads to the section where Pinchas occurs wearing out a lot faster than the rest of the scroll. This week over sukkot, I noticed several damaged letters and even some whole words rubbed out in or around the maftir reading. Apparently this is very common in scrolls only ever used for maftir. In fact, the original yeriot of that section were replaced years ago and this is the second round of fading.

I'm not sure what can be done to prevent it, but if it were up to me I would rotate the assignment of Torahs to readings every few years. Unfortunately there are no pictures for this post. I noticed the first faded letter on shabbat and I neglected to take pictures while doing the touch-ups.

Worst Mezuzot Ever I

These mezuzot were actually taken off of somebody's door.

Both mezuzot were probably not written by Jews, definitely not by trained scribes. There are letters that look like other letters, letters that look like numbers numbers, and letters that look like nothing much in particular. The bottom mezuzah is also written on "klaf mashuach," literally "smeared parchment."  

Klaf mashuach is ordinary parchment covered with a chalk based substance called log in Hebrew. At one time, it was standard procedure to coat the backs of sheets used in Torah scrolls with log so that it would be uniformly white instead of showing the natural variations of the skins. Ashkenazim stopped doing that a while back, preferring the natural look (I also think it looks nicer personally) but many sepheradim still write on parchment that was mashuach on the reverse.

This mezuzah, however was mashuach on the inside which presents two major halachic problems which render the mezuzah worthless according to the majority of poskim  regardless of the awful handwriting:

1. If the mezuzah is written on chalk paste, then it isn't written on parchment (chatzitza)
2. Moreover, even if for some reason the chalk paste were to be considered part of the parchment negating the first issue (battel) the chalk paste is prone to peeling and flaking when rolled up, causing the writing to rub out as you can see in the specimen above.

Despite all of this, there are less than honest scribes who continue to write on klaf mashuach because is easier to write on since it has a more papery texture. Many mezuzot and cheaper pairs of tefillin are still written on Mashuach.

Blooper Reel 1

I have several long, serious, and research intensive posts in the works. One is on the economics of STA"M, another on the precise definition of "shinui tzura". Unfortunately I have no time so here are some pictures instead.

Retzua held together with duct tape

Tefillin straps are leather made of the skin of a kosher animal. Which species of bovine grows a duct tape hide? Obviously a retzua cannot be held together with duct tape, but what about using it to cover up faded bits? 

There is nothing wrong with the dye used in duct tape per se. The problem is that it is a new layer, not dye. This is similar to the issue of tiach -- a manufacturing practice where the battim were covered in putty instead of painted. The halacha is that if the putty comes of in small flakes, it might as well be paint; otherwise it hasn't been painted. Therefore covering an unpainted retzua in tape would not make it kosher.

Textbook bal tosif

This past shabbat we read about the prohibition of Bal Tosif -- not adding to a mitzvah. The classic example of this given in the literature is "not putting 5 scrolls in your tefillin." I recall that every time we came across this in school someone would ask "but why would anybody do that?" and the response was always something like "I have no idea. It's hypothetical."

Well, here you go. It is common to stuff tefillin with scraps of parchment so that the parshiyot don't rattle around. This shel-yad was stuffed with many extra pieces as shown here ... including an extra parsha taken from a shel rosh (the scroll on top.)

A question of chatzitza

I've decided to postpone the series on checking tefillin for a week or so, when I get a load of new parshiyos which should provide some material. In the meantime, here is a halachic question for my vast readership. Come on, at least two of you are rabbis. :)

There are various foul-smelling chemicals available to sofrim to clean klaf, smooth it, or produce other desired effects. Every once in a while, a new additive comes out and people wonder if it constitutes a chatzitza. The latest round of this debate is about a product which raises a variety of other questions, but one remark that I read piqued my interest: "A layer one millimeter thick is obviously a chatzitza and one molecule is obviously not, but what is the cut-off?"

1. Is that premise true? Or is a contiguous layer deliberately applied to the klaf (or the hand, or anything else where these laws come into play) a chatzitza regardless of its thickness? Do those criteria even matter?
2. Even granting the premise, is that discussed anywhere? 

The Rambam in Yesodei Torah 6 about erasing Shemot on your skin comes to mind but it's unhelpful because all it tells us is that there is something that can block the water without being a halachic barrier. Same for the halacha about ink on one's hands for נטילת ידים -- the fact that you can wash means the ink is too thin to constitute a chatzitza, but I'm not sure there is any upper limit anywhere.

House keeping

Wise words from Randall Munroe of xkcd.com

Since I only have about five readers anyway, that part is taken care of. Content generation will start on Thursday afternoon with a series on checking tefillin.

Hilchos Legibility I

I titled this post with a "one" even though I don't plan on doing a series because a major component of the specs for any product is usability, and for manuscripts that means legibility so I'll probably be writing about it a lot. Last week I finally got around to getting certified as a sofer by the Vaad Mishmereth STa"M, the self-declared international regulatory body for scribes. (They used to do a lot of consumer protection seminars and things. Now they license sofrim under the assumption that if the scribe has an up-to-date license a consumer can trust him.) In true Israeli style this involved under one hour of testing and paperwork that blew up into a full-day ordeal thanks to travel time, waiting time, and another-two-hours-because-that's-how-we-do-things time. I can now compete with my friends' tzav rishon (Israeli draft board) stories.

Anyway, on to the topic. One of the questions on my written exam was "what if the leg of an ayin is horizontal and short?" I answered that it is passul (invalid) because it looks like a tet. No idea how they graded it, but I think I was justified the very next day while trying to read something in yeshiva.

This is one style of the font family commonly known as "rashi script." In fact this is the kind used in the older prints of books found in yeshiva libraries. Look at the tet and the ayin (the 9th and 19th letters going right to left); it wouldn't be too hard to confuse them if you didn't see them in the context of the whole alphabet in order.