Jewish Scribal Arts, How They Are Practiced Today, And Also Fraud
Hey, wanna hear about arcane Jewish scribal arts still being practiced instead of election results?
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) November 4, 2020
So as my friends and almost everyone else know, I worked full time in a family owned Judaica store in Teaneck for 6 years. As such, I know a weirdly large amount about Safrut, the Jewish practice of writing sacred texts on parchment for ritual purposes, for a layperson.
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) November 4, 2020
Safrut is the collective noun for the practice of the ritual scribing and also for what they produce.
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) November 4, 2020
The person doing the scribing is a Sofer/Soferet (Hebrew is a gendered language, we’re working on it).
The things they make are often referred to by the acronym of S”TM - Sifrei Torah (Torah scrolls), Tefillin, Mezuzah/Megillah.
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) November 4, 2020
Mezuzah means the parchment that goes inside the case you see on the doorway of many Jewish homes.
Mezuzah is the Hebrew word for doorpost. We are commanded to inscribe certain Torah verses “on the door posts of your homes and on your gates.” Since it’s entirely impractical to actually carve them into the wall, we write them in a ritually prescribed manner and nail that up.
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) November 4, 2020
Torah scrolls are those things that synagogues keep in the big cabinet at the front of the sanctuary and what we read the weekly Torah portion from on Shabbat. A Torah scroll takes about a year to write as a full time occupation. They are PRICY.
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) November 4, 2020
Megillah is the Hebrew word for 5 books of the Tanakh written after the prophets, covering various narratives, aphorisms and love poetry. The Book of Esther, Book of Ruth, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, and Song of Songs are all megillot.
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) November 4, 2020
Typically only Esther is written in a ritual manner on parchment, but some communities actually have scrolls of all of them. Which is super cool!
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) November 4, 2020
Esther is read on Purim, a holiday I have increasingly complex feelings about as I get older.
Tefillin are these funky black boxes that some Jews strap to their arms and head with black leather. They also contain parchments with Torah verses in them, ones that we have been commanded to “bind as a sign upon your arm and be ‘totafot’ between your eyes.”
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) November 4, 2020
Another interesting note - there is no English word for Tefillin. It is a Hebrew word that means exactly what it is. The closest thing we have to a translation is the Greek word “phylactery” (yes, like the thing in D&D. It’s kind of antisemitic and weird for Jews).
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) November 4, 2020
However, I do get an immense amount of satisfaction referring to workshops who only make Tefillin as “phylactery factories.”
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) November 4, 2020
Tefillin are made entirely out of leather. The boxes, the straps, the parchment. Yes, we bind the words of God to our arms with leather straps.
Now, onto the actual scribing bits!
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) November 4, 2020
Note how I said Tefillin are made out of leather. That goes for all ritual scribal parchment. It’s made out of actual animal hide. This means sometimes it’s thicker, sometimes it has spots, sometimes it’s entirely brown (deerskin usually).
Deerskin Torah scrolls are rare and VERY COOL.
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) November 4, 2020
The parchment must come from a kosher animal. This means a split hoofed ruminant. The hide does not have to come from an animal slaughtered in a kosher manner, but it does have to be prepared with the intent to use it for Safrut.
Parchment is not uniformly smooth. It must be scraped to be a suitable surface for writing. BUT unlike Christian scribes, who could get away with vellum (parchment that has been treated specifically to be written on), Jewish scribal ritual requires the ink affix itself directly.
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) November 4, 2020
The ink recipes are written down in the Talmud and still used today.
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) November 4, 2020
There is a certain type of chalk substance called ‘log’ than can be smeared on really rough parchment to make it easier to write on. This is... not ideal.
Why, you ask?
Well, most Safrut is rolled for storage. Tefillin parchments are rolled up to put in the boxes and only unrolled when you check them to make sure they’re still kosher. Same with mezuzot. And one of the requirements to keep the entire thing kosher is that no letter can be cracked.
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) November 4, 2020
See where I’m going with this?
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) November 4, 2020
If you coat the parchment, write on the coating and then roll the parchment....
You’re going to crack the letters the first time you roll the thing. NOT GOOD.
DO NOT BUY COATED MEZUZOT.
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) November 4, 2020
Ahem.
So you’ve got special parchment, special ink. Now let’s get to the writing materials.
Quill pens.
Yup, in the secular year 2020 we are still writing our ritual items with feathers.
Well, also reeds.
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) November 4, 2020
Iron (or any metal) may never be used in writing sacred texts. We do not use weapons to write the words of God.
This leaves very few materials remaining. Feather quills (usually turkey), reed pens (REALLY finicky, rarely used) and plastic nibs.
Oh, and before you get a romantic image in your head, quills for actual writing DO NOT LOOK LIKE THIS pic.twitter.com/SykvS7Q3KD
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) November 4, 2020
The barbs of the feather would get in your nose. @GeekCalligraphy has an excellent rant on this elsewhere.
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) November 4, 2020
Quills for actually writing things down look like this: pic.twitter.com/EIWuGXUupa
You can see that it’s trimmed of anything that would drip ink and cut down so that the feather isn’t tickling his face.
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) November 4, 2020
OK, we’ve got something to write with, something to write on, and ink to write it with. Now it’s time to talk fonts.
Yeah, you heard me. Fonts.
The letters must be formed in a particular manner. They contain prescribed decorative flourishes called ‘taggin.’ Talk to @hasoferet about taggin and their history, she is doing some amazing research there.
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) November 4, 2020
Why do we ritualize the writing of our sacred texts like this? Preservation.
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) November 4, 2020
We can compare current Torah scrolls to ancient ones and other than differences in handwriting style, they’re near to identical.
We don’t have a whole lot of linguistic drift.
We can actually document when certain spelling errors were introduced to the texts by studying things like the Aleppo Codex or the Dead Sea Scrolls.
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) November 4, 2020
Because the other thing about our sacred texts? We don’t throw them away when they’re not kosher (useable for ritual) anymore.
If possible, we fix them. If it’s not possible, we bury them. Or we store them in a ‘genizah.’
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) November 4, 2020
And the chemical composition of the ink literally binds to parchment. It can fade, it can flake off if improperly made or stored. But old ritual scrolls are readable today.
We can study them and learn a lot about the history of our canon. One of the most famous treasure troves that no one outside the Jewish world knows about is the Cairo Genizah. It isn’t as old as the Qumran scrolls, but it’s a fascinating glimpse into Jewish practice.
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) November 4, 2020
Ok, so now we’re going to get into Scribal Fraud!
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) November 4, 2020
Yes, we have fraud. Mostly in the mezuzah market.
Why is there fraud in the mezuzah market, I hear @_alexrowland asking.
Because of mezuzah cases.
The decorative cases that the scroll goes into are more often than not tiny. This means the scroll has to be similarly small to fit. And the scroll has to be kosher.
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) November 4, 2020
How do you know if any item of Safrut is kosher if you yourself are not an expert in the process?
You trust a certifying agency! Just like with food.
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) November 4, 2020
But packaged food has a mark on it! Restaurants list who certifies them!
SO DO MEZUZOT!!
The store that I used to work for had their Safrut certified by an independent agency that both scans them with a computer and has them hand checked. There is a tiny sticker on the back of the mezuzot and megillot, and a pencil check mark. The Tefillin come with a certificate.
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) November 4, 2020
There is also an official Israeli government certification. It’s a sticker on a plastic bag.
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) November 4, 2020
These stickers are often forged. DO NOT BUY A MEZUZAH THAT CAME IN A SEALED BAG.
ESPECIALLY IF IT IS SUPER INEXPENSIVE.
Because here’s the other dirty little secret.
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) November 4, 2020
Safrut should be hella pricy. The materials are costly. The labor is skilled and should be appropriately compensated.
It’s rarely so when it comes to mezuzot. Those have a tendency to be churned out in sweatshop style workshops.
The profit margins on Safrut are razor thin. If you are paying less than $40 USD for a mezuzah scroll, someone is being cheated. Usually the scribe and you.
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) November 4, 2020
I have no ending for this so I take a small bow.
— T Ash (@crewgrrl) November 4, 2020
I hope it made your day a little brighter.