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This morning in Flushing, fixing Torahs. Days off? what're those??
One of them had "Ramsem" instead of "Ramses" - you know, as in Rameses, as in Egypt. This was probably because "s" and "m" look quite similar and the original scribe wasn't all that focused. In any case, it now reads "Ramses" like it should.
This kind of fix illustrates one of the crucial sofrut principles, that of hak tokhot, or carving to form a letter. To turn final mem into samekh, all you need to do in principle is round off the corners - but in sofrut, that counts as forming the letter by carving. We don't do this, because carving isn't writing, and what we do is writing. So instead of just merrily trimming away the corners, you have to erase the whole bottom part of the letter until it isn't any letter at all, and then rewrite it with curved corners.
This is one of the things where afterwards you can't tell the difference, but the proper method is crucial. If you carve, the letter is pasul and the Torah is pasul. If you write, all is kosher. But no-one except you knows whether you wrote or carved.
One of them had "Ramsem" instead of "Ramses" - you know, as in Rameses, as in Egypt. This was probably because "s" and "m" look quite similar and the original scribe wasn't all that focused. In any case, it now reads "Ramses" like it should.This kind of fix illustrates one of the crucial sofrut principles, that of hak tokhot, or carving to form a letter. To turn final mem into samekh, all you need to do in principle is round off the corners - but in sofrut, that counts as forming the letter by carving. We don't do this, because carving isn't writing, and what we do is writing. So instead of just merrily trimming away the corners, you have to erase the whole bottom part of the letter until it isn't any letter at all, and then rewrite it with curved corners.
This is one of the things where afterwards you can't tell the difference, but the proper method is crucial. If you carve, the letter is pasul and the Torah is pasul. If you write, all is kosher. But no-one except you knows whether you wrote or carved.
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