(no subject)

This flaky Torah is exceptionally annoying. The letters often run into each other, which is bad news in a Torah; each letter must be surrounded by blank space, so if letters touch each other, they're invalid. The original scribe of the flaky Torah must have been very careless indeed; a letter runs into another letter once every two or three lines, the whole way through the sefer. So I have to go through twice, once with a knife to fix the careless mistakes and once with a pen to fix the flaking.

I keep having to dilute the ink, as well. If the ink's too sticky it just picks up flakes and takes ages to apply; you want it runny enough that it just goes over and between the flakes. But if you dilute it too much, it spreads much too far and just makes an uncontrollable blob which soaks in and is hard to remove, so you have to be careful and keep topping up with small amounts of alcohol, since the ink gets sticky after about an hour.

Thence to class at YU and thence to teaching bat mitzvah, and thence home to finish correcting the current Megillah and sewing it together.

(no subject)

Spent yesterday working in a studio in which music was playing. Pirated music, and the others were merrily chatting about various things having to do with pirating music.

They're working on Torahs. You know, that book dealing with communal integrity and civil justice. It says Lo tignov - don't steal - right there in front of them. I pointed this out, and heard a variety of excuses to justify pirating music ranging from vaguely creative (but unconvincing) to downright pathetic. Soferim are supposed to have a high degree of integrity. They are not supposed to do things which they know are wrong and make up feeble excuses to justify it. It's disturbing to see people working on the symbol of all that is good whilst enjoying stolen property.

I can understand people working on a Torah and going out to eat treif food for lunch - that comes from having decided that the religious principle of kashrut can be discarded. If you're Reform, that's fine. But I doubt that they would also think that religious prohibitions on stealing can be discarded, or that the communal principle of adherence to civil law can be discarded in order to steal. Reform doesn't go that far.

Whether you like it or not, until the civil law changes, pirating music is stealing. It damages people's livelihoods, and undermines communities. This is why it is illegal. A sofer occupies a position of trust within a community; a sofer can't survive without a community's trust. He has a duty to repay the community's trust by acting in a way that won't damage the community. Providing pasul sefarim damages the community in one way, and stealing damages it in another way.

Please, soferim. If you must listen to pirated music, don't do it while you're working on Torahs.

(no subject)

Took Ansche Chesed's megillah down to Eichlers (Judaica place) in the city, to get it spell-checked by computer. They were sufficiently impressed that I am feeling rather good. Even the ultra-Orthodox-looking chappie, whom I would have expected to be disapproving, was very nice and said I had talent.

Thence to Ansche Chesed's Hebrew school (like Sunday school, a place where kids go after school to have religion drummed into them) to talk to them about How We Make Torahs. Learning from the tefillin wrap talk, I started by rolling out a Torah and letting them all come up close and look (but no touching!). Then they started asking questions which led nicely into the show-and-tell sofrut-materials part.

The rabbi thought he'd have a little joke with the kids. I'd explained about spellchecking by computer...

Rabbi: How can we tell that all the names of God are spelled correctly even without using a computer?*

Bright Kid: Because God would smite her?

good kid!

The rabbi also said it was nice to meet a sofer with a sense of humour. Which was nice.

And my grown-up student did her whole piece bang in tune today for the first time, which is such terrific progress.

* the Megillah does not contain any of the names of God