torah scroll writing

[Prof Drew]

6 hours ago, inkstainedruth said:

Salmon Rossi

Thanks for explaining @inkstainedruth. A friend of mine is also Jewish by choice. She tried to learn how to be a scribe. If it matters, I grew up with the traditions, but am not so religious, but appreciate the culture.

 

Reading (or chanting) Torah scrolls is not for the faint hearted as it forgoes vowels. You have to know the words or memorize the script. Otherwise it would be like reading this.

thwse t wld b lke rdng ths. (knowing which vowels to add when you read the text). Even more difficult for scribes

 

Yes, Rossi's music has a lovely baroque feeling. There are many wonderful secular and religious Jewish composers of all types of music, jazz, classical, klezmer, tin pan alley, etc.

 

I also like Gregorian chants and Koranic calls too. Maybe my Jewish sense appreciates different scales in those genres... also in jazz.

 

It is good your husband can rest a bit after a big day. Take care.

[Doc Dan]

Reading this and knowing a tiny bit about the Hebrew language to which the OP is referring, I don't see why the VAC700 wouldn't work with that wonderful Jowo 1.1 stub nib. I know my 580 and Eco stubs are wet writers. I don't know about gold stub nibs as to which would be wet. 

 

Hebrew is an interesting language. The Biblical Hebrew to which he refers has only around four thousand words, if I remember rightly. What drives people crazy is not so much the lack of vowels, even though that has caused some issues. Really, the headache comes from the changing forms of the words, sometimes to the point where they are unrecognizable: Qal, Niphal, and etc. 

[ParramattaPaul]

Thank you Prof and Doc. I truly appreciate what I have learned from you and others have posted here.

[seymour]

Hi Dan

With regard to your description about the small vocabulary, it simply works differently. The same word in a different structure will have a different meaning. For example the word to 'break' in an intensive form will become 'shatter'. Another form parallels the French and is called 'reflexive'. I find the grammar fascinating. Anybody, who has studied Arabic, which has a similar structure, will tell you that Arabic grammar is even more complex than Hebrew and aesthetically very satisfying.

Anyhow one can always try studying Chinese, which looks even more challenging!

Chaim

[ParramattaPaul]

2 hours ago, seymour said:

The same word in a different structure will have a different meaning. For example the word to 'break' in an intensive form will become 'shatter'. Another form parallels the French and is called 'reflexive'.

To me that sounds as though one word includes or is a variety of synonyms with the correct one dictated by the passage in which it is used.  Is that even remotely correct?

[seymour]

Hi Dan

With regard to your description about the small vocabulary, it simply works differently. The same word in a different structure will have a different meaning. For example the word to 'break' in an intensive form will become 'shatter'. Another form parallels the French and is called 'reflexive'. I find the grammar fascinating. Anybody, who has studied Arabic, which has a similar structure, will tell you that Arabic grammar is even more complex than Hebrew and aesthetically very satisfying.

Anyhow one can always try studying Chinese, which looks even more challenging!

Chaim

[seymour]

Hi Paul

Life is a little more complicated than that. Hebrew words are usually based on three consonants. When I change the structure of a word, e.g. from simple to intensive, the consonants remain but the vowels change. In other cases, the change requires the addition of consonants. Arabic works in a similar way.

Chaim

[ParramattaPaul]

Thank you Chaim.

 

Stay safe, and know that you and the people of Israel are in my prayers. 

 

Blessings to you.

Paul

[XYZZY]

I just discovered this thread.  Very cool.  I am Roman Catholic, but when I started copying the Bible I picked up an interest in "how do other people do this?" and inevitably came across web sites from some sofers.  Two that I found informative are https://www.sofer.co.uk/ and https://lavlor.blogspot.com/ by .  But you can find many if so inclined.  A few of my big takeaways are below, basically random observations that made an impression on a Catholic fountain pen user.  I invite anybody to correct me where I've got things wrong:

• I think there is a natural human tendency to group things into "other".  I think most Christians are aware that there are many practices of Christianity and can name several.  As a Roman Catholic I often hear other traditions grouped together as "Protestant" as if they're all the same, which is somewhere between silly and insulting, depending on who you ask.  Guess what?  There's different practices of Judaism and they have different requirements and traditions for their Torah, even sometimes down to the shapes of the letters.  There's a lot of overlap and it's easy to group things together.  As an outside I try to regularly remind myself of this regularly, and I'm sure I forget more often than I realize.

• People study or apprentice in the rules and requirements for a long time.  It cannot be represented in a blog or forum post.

• There is a "no left hand writing" rule, but apparently some interpret it as "Don't write with your non-dominant hand".   So ask your rabbi.  Similar for other rules:  women cannot be sofers, yet there are some synagogues with Torah produced by women.

• The ink mostly sits on the surface of the animal skin.  This means it can be erased by carefully scraping it from the surface.  Not a luxury that we have with 52gsm paper and dye/pigments soaked down between the fibers 🙂

• You may not erase the name of the diety.  Any mistakes there mean that you have to replace the entire column of the hide.  And there are restrictions around that, I think intending to prevent you from turning the scroll into a patchwork quilt.  

• I have read that ink must by either carbon or IG.  My personal take is that the rules were once intended as requiring that it be high quality black ink and the rules listed what was known, at that time, to fit the bill.  Honey is commonly used as a binder; probably not FP friendly 😉  Can you just use Platinum Carbon Black? I have no idea (nor do I know whether PCB works well on animal hides). 

• Ink sitting on the surface also means that, with use, ink can flake off which can result in a once kosher Torah no longer being kosher (i.e. invalid, or "pasul").  Torah repair is actually a little industry.

• One of the requirements for a Torah scroll is that the lines be fully justified.  However, most of us are used to text justification being implemented by adding spaces between words.  For a Torah scroll the requirement seems to be to widen the letters.  You can see examples and explanation at https://www.hasoferet.com/scribal-arts/stretching-letters/

• There are many requirements that some might consider "just rules", but when I look at them they are about ensuring quality.  Things like letters cannot run together (there must be space around them).  Or height, width, number of lines, and margins of a column of text.  Taken on their own they might be arbitrary rules, but are there to help ensure a quality and visually appealing artifact worthy of its role, no different than studying typography and learning about line spacing or margins.