hatam_soferet (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hatam_soferet) wrote2006-02-07 09:57 pm
hatam_soferet) wrote2006-02-07 09:57 pm
Entry tags:
greenhorn! greenhorn!
And just by the way - checking tefillin is not as much fun as it looks. For the uninitiated, every so often one is supposed to have investigated the contents of one's tefillin, to see what damage time and sweaty heads have wrought.
Opening them isn't so bad; if you're lucky you can unpick the stitches (they're sewn with the sofer's thread, that special combination of tendons and glue), and if you're less lucky you have to cut them with your scalpel and pull them out one by one, but that's okay. Once you get them open, you pull out the little slips of parchment within.
The little slips of parchment have Very Small Writing on them, and Very Small Writing is much easier on smooth surfaces, hence the parchment is often coated before use with a sort of whitewash. This would be all right, except that whitewash isn't all that flexible, so once the slips are rolled up, the writing is in a pretty fragile state, and it takes only minor variations in temperature or humidity to make the writing crack right through. Like the spines of best-selling novels, you know how when you borrow someone's best-seller and you open it and then they complain because of the crease marks on the spine?
Anyway, cracks right through are Bad News for tefillin, because tefillin have this funky little rule about being written sequentially. If Torah letters crack, you can just ink them right over and proceed upon your merry way. Tefillin you can't do that - once a letter's broken, you basically can't fix it,* and that invalidates the paragraph, and that invalidates the tefillin. Given that atmospheric conditions change now and again, it's considered a good plan to check for damage periodically.
The annoying bit is the putting them back together again. Let's suppose you were lucky, and didn't find any problems. You have to roll the little slips back up; that's okay. Then you have to tie them once round, wrap a strip of parchment over that, and tie again over the top of that. And you have to tie it with cow hair.
Cow hair is possibly the most inappropriate medium imaginable for this task. It's rather like acetate - you can bend it, and the bend will show up and get in your way, but it won't stay folded reliably. Cow hairs are also short; horsehair would be far more sensible, except that horses aren't kosher. Now imagine you have a roll of parchment in one hand (which also behaves like acetate, and is irritatingly inclined to spring apart at the slightest opportunity), which you must keep rolled tightly because otherwise it won't fit in its little box, and in the same hand you are trying to hold down the several ends of a bunch of calf hairs and both sides of a parchment strip. Your other hand is trying to hold all the hairs at once and wrap them round the variously-engaged fingers of the first hand, without letting any of the bits move.
Now slip the loose end under one of the wraps and pull tight (you are up to your fourth hand by now). The little package you've just made is supposed to hold itself together, but if your calf hair is springy and bad-tempered, it'll just leap off and all the bits will run in different directions and you'll have to start over.
Oh, and you're sneezing continuously.
It gets better with practice and when you're not also trying to juggle tissues, it really does, but this is what it's like when you're a newbie at assembling tefillin.
* unless you can erase from the end to that letter, and then fix it and rewrite sequentially, but you can't usually do that because God's name usually gets in the way, and erasing that is seriously Bad News.
Opening them isn't so bad; if you're lucky you can unpick the stitches (they're sewn with the sofer's thread, that special combination of tendons and glue), and if you're less lucky you have to cut them with your scalpel and pull them out one by one, but that's okay. Once you get them open, you pull out the little slips of parchment within.
The little slips of parchment have Very Small Writing on them, and Very Small Writing is much easier on smooth surfaces, hence the parchment is often coated before use with a sort of whitewash. This would be all right, except that whitewash isn't all that flexible, so once the slips are rolled up, the writing is in a pretty fragile state, and it takes only minor variations in temperature or humidity to make the writing crack right through. Like the spines of best-selling novels, you know how when you borrow someone's best-seller and you open it and then they complain because of the crease marks on the spine?
Anyway, cracks right through are Bad News for tefillin, because tefillin have this funky little rule about being written sequentially. If Torah letters crack, you can just ink them right over and proceed upon your merry way. Tefillin you can't do that - once a letter's broken, you basically can't fix it,* and that invalidates the paragraph, and that invalidates the tefillin. Given that atmospheric conditions change now and again, it's considered a good plan to check for damage periodically.
The annoying bit is the putting them back together again. Let's suppose you were lucky, and didn't find any problems. You have to roll the little slips back up; that's okay. Then you have to tie them once round, wrap a strip of parchment over that, and tie again over the top of that. And you have to tie it with cow hair.
Cow hair is possibly the most inappropriate medium imaginable for this task. It's rather like acetate - you can bend it, and the bend will show up and get in your way, but it won't stay folded reliably. Cow hairs are also short; horsehair would be far more sensible, except that horses aren't kosher. Now imagine you have a roll of parchment in one hand (which also behaves like acetate, and is irritatingly inclined to spring apart at the slightest opportunity), which you must keep rolled tightly because otherwise it won't fit in its little box, and in the same hand you are trying to hold down the several ends of a bunch of calf hairs and both sides of a parchment strip. Your other hand is trying to hold all the hairs at once and wrap them round the variously-engaged fingers of the first hand, without letting any of the bits move.
Now slip the loose end under one of the wraps and pull tight (you are up to your fourth hand by now). The little package you've just made is supposed to hold itself together, but if your calf hair is springy and bad-tempered, it'll just leap off and all the bits will run in different directions and you'll have to start over.
Oh, and you're sneezing continuously.
It gets better with practice and when you're not also trying to juggle tissues, it really does, but this is what it's like when you're a newbie at assembling tefillin.
* unless you can erase from the end to that letter, and then fix it and rewrite sequentially, but you can't usually do that because God's name usually gets in the way, and erasing that is seriously Bad News.