Annett Martini & Dana Eichhorst
A paleographic particularity of the Jewish scribal tradition is that some letters of the strongly standardised square script featured within Torah scrolls are adorned with crownlets (tagin) or written in an unusual way (otiyyot meshunnot). Not the focus of academic discourse of the past, these decorations took the centre stage of our workshop Origin, History, and Interpretation of the Tagin and Otiyyot Meshunnot for Writing the STaM.
The Talmud specifies the seven letters gimel, zayin, tet, ayin, nun, tsade, and shin (ShaʿAṬNeZ GeṢ) for this uncommon letter ornamentation. Yet, mediaeval written testimonies from the time of the 12th to the 15th centuries (and some later testimonies of this phenomenon within the Megillot) present numerous exceptions to this antique limit and a remarkable wealth of different ornaments. Legal scholars from different regions saw in the unusual curlicues, arcs, little flags, and dashes a threat posed to the authentic gestalt of a Sefer Torah, and they urged for uniformity. However, even the standard work Sefer ha-tagin (10th/11th c.), which was widely received in scribe circles and provided copyists with a precise listing of words and letters for such modifications, could not curb the enthusiasm for these letter ornamentations.
Parallel to this uncommon writing practice, an exegetical tradition began to develop by which these crownlets and unusually written letters, and also the standardised letterforms were interpreted from rabbinic-ethical, mystical, and philosophical perspectives.
The goal of our workshop, which took place online from Nov 6-8, 2023, was to discuss the phenomenon of the tagin and otiyyot meshunnot for writing the STaM from two perspectives.
First, as a paleographic tradition that has developed different regional characteristics over time. Manuscript evidence of halakhic treatises on the correct visual appearance of these signs testify to a lively debate on the forms of tagin and otiyyot meshunnot. The authors or copyists of these writings in different times and regions gave manyfold examples which reveal the enormous richness of shapes. Moreover, the artefacts themselves – scrolls and even codices, dating from the Middle Ages and modern times (here especially the Megillot) – surprise with a great wealth of variants. The workshop aimed to provide an opportunity to present material witnesses, new insights into the origin of tagin, and various sources for describing the shape of the unusual letters.
Second, as a subject of exegesis: Research has almost completely neglected the numerous exegetical approaches towards the forms of the tagin and otiyyot meshunnot that flourished especially in the Middle Ages, although this literature provides deep insight into both the intellectual history and the cultural memory of Diaspora Jewry. The workshop opened up space for rabbinic, mystical, philosophical, and educational conceptions regarding these special letters to determine which role they played on a metaphysical level.
When we started planning our workshop, we assumed that we would gather together a handful of colleagues interested in this paleographic peculiarity of tagin and otiyyot meshunnot. The overwhelming response to our Call for Papers, published more as a formality than anything else, though, surprised us: Scholars from around the world dedicate themselves to these special letters. Reading their abstracts, which approach the topic of tagin and otiyyot meshunnot from many different perspectives, was an exciting activity, as was putting together an incredibly rich and diverse programme. This workshop presented the very first opportunity for scholars of tagin and otiyyot meshunnot to come together, share and discuss their research.
Day One
The first presenter to start was Robert VanHoff. In his lecture, Robert dealt with an incredibly interesting phenomenon of the Masoretic tradition, namely the different visual representations of the divine name in the works of the Tiberian scribes Ahron ben Asher and Ephraim ben Buya’ah. There is no doubt that the divine name already received special attention in the ancient Jewish scribal tradition, as reflected in distinctive markings. This is all the more interesting as there are also indications in mediaeval Torah scroll witnesses of a practice of writing the tetragrammaton that deviates from the normal scribal flow.
To shed light on the phenomenon of letter decorations in the Middle Ages, Mark Farnadi Jerusálmi took us further back in time. He posits that letter shapes found in mosaic inscriptions in Byzantine synagogues provide insight into the development from ziyyunim to the mediaeval tagin (crowns). He, therefore, compared the ShaʿAṬNeZ GeṢ group from ancient mosaics with the shape of letters from manuscripts in the classical sense, written on parchment, and investigated the evolution of these graphic elements.
Marc Michaels provided insights into his research on various textual witnesses of the scribal manual Sefer Tagin, which is so important for both scribes and researchers dealing with the phenomenon of tagin and otiyyot meshunnot. In his lecture, he was able to identify lines of tradition that differ from one another in terms of content but also in the structural arrangement of the material.
Following these two presentations, the legitimate question arose as to whether and how tagin differ from ziyyunin. This question, in turn, led to the justified demand for a glossary, which will now be prepared in collaboration with the participants of the workshop.
Mordechai Weintraub added another perspective on the Sefer Tagin and posed the intriguing question of the extent to which the determination of the position and form of the tagin and otiyyot meshunnot was guided by exegetical considerations. This question was a recurring theme throughout the workshop, in fact, and was answered by the speakers in different ways.
Jen Taylor Friedman illustrated how helpful a quantitative analysis of mediaeval sources can be. The comparative analysis of the manuscripts she examined and annotated made clear that scribes in Ashkenaz in particular tended to modify the letters in creative ways. In so doing, they not only deviated markedly from the standards of the scribal manual Sefer Tagin, but also did not seem to be particular about following a “correct” or standardised way of writing the Torah. According to her, these strikingly strong deviations could be due to specific exegetical approaches to interpreting the tagin.
Mauro Perani brought the first of three wonderful workshop days to a close with his lecture, in which he offered a comprehensive overview of the history of tagin and otiyyot meshunnot both as a palaeographical phenomenon in Torah scrolls and as a subject of exegetical consideration. Using the famous Bologna scroll, whose “rediscovery” and research are to his credit, as an example, he illustrated the extent to which mediaeval scrolls differ from the later canonised system, according to which only the seven letters ShaʿAṬNeZ GeṢ ought to be decorated with tagin. At the same time, only eighty per cent of the tagin in the Bologna scroll correspond to the instructions of the Sefer Tagin, prompting one to ask how principle (or none at all) was followed when adding the remaining twenty per cent.
Day Two
Sholom Eisenstat shared with us his love and curiosity about the so-called inverted nun in Numbers 10:35-36 and introduced us to the evolution of this scribal phenomenon. In addition to Greek editorial or diacritical signs as possible precursors or parallel phenomena, he also considered the extensive accompanying discussion about the design and position of this palaeographic anomaly in rabbinic literature.
The Biblioteca Palatina in Parma holds a manuscript containing a relatively short text entitled Kitrei Otiyyot Tefillin, which is attributed to Rabbi Yehuda he-Hasid. In her lecture, Emese Kozma traced the history of this text, introduced its content and emphasised its halakhic character. Through philological analysis of this and other texts, she not only established references to other writings from the circle of the Haside Ashkenaz, but also contextualised it within this Jewish literary tradition.
While Emese Kozma considered the text she analysed not to be a mystical treatise on the tagin, Dana Eichhorst showed in her lecture on the Sefer Tagin that is attributed to Eleazar of Worms that the tagin in this mediaeval work are certainly interpreted in a speculative kabbalistic way. Through a comparative textual analysis, for which she inter alia used Eleazar’s main speculative work, Sode Razayya, she was able to demonstrate that a provenance in the circle of the Haside Ashkenaz is probable and that Eleazar’s interpretation of the tagin must also be read against the background of his understanding of the decisive role of the Hebrew letters as divine means of creation.
Gabriel Slamovits focussed on orthographic anomalies using the example of the majuscule letter Bet and the minuscule letter He, as they are displayed in Torah scrolls at the respective beginning of both of the biblical creation accounts. He interpreted this palaeographic phenomenon based on contemporary readings of the two biblical accounts of creation, offering an original modern exegesis of these letterforms.
By providing and describing a variety of different mediaeval source texts, Yosef Ginsberg pointed out an existing gap in research: The interpretation and reflection of tagin and otiyyot meshunnot in kabbalistic texts. Thereby, he also showed to what extent the manual Sefer Tagin reverberates in the kabbalistic sources he presented.
Anne May Dallendörfer presented her research on the important late mediaeval scribal handbook Barukh she-amar. In addition to the complicated history of the text, she showed what insights we can gain from the text about the problems scribes faced and about the solutions they found.
Day Three
As curator at the Museum of the Bible, Jesse Abelman provided a special insight into a mediaeval Torah scroll of the museum’s collection. The changes and corrections made in the scroll affecting tagin and otiyyot meshunnot allow us to reconstruct the scroll’s unique textual history. The corrections found in this scroll, however, also reflect prevailing norms of scribes in dealing with tagin and otiyyot meshunnot.
Because the use of decorative elements and special letters in Torah scrolls is ultimately subject to constant change, Abraham Marmorstein explained how the halakhic authorities dealt with letter forms and how the legal regulations were justified in each case.
The lectures by Jonathan Homrighausen and Dagmara Budzioch were dedicated to the tagin and otiyyot meshunnot in Esther scrolls. Jonathan presented the special case of the emphasised and enlarged Waw in the name Vaizatha and how this palaeographical peculiarity in the Book of Esther was discussed by rabbinical scholars in various ways.
Based on hundreds of examined manuscripts, Dagmara demonstrated that tagin and otiyyot meshunnot play, indeed, an important role in Esther scrolls as well. Thus, alongside Torah scrolls, they constitute an object of research in their own right within the study of the history of writing sacred texts.
The Book of Esther was also the starting point for Emmanuel Bloch’s lecture. Unlike Jonathan’s lecture, the focus here was not on the enlarged letters, but on the small letters in chapter 9 and how their numerical value of 707 is interpreted in some orthodox Jewish circles under consideration of the biblical account as prophetic code of sorts, connecting the story of Esther’s triumph to the Nuremberg trials in the Jewish year 5707.
Deborah B. Thompson’s lecture, which was the final one in our three-day online workshop, focussed on another important textual source for the study of tagin and otiyyot meshunnot, namely tefillin. In her presentation, Deborah looked specifically at those tefillin scrolls that were offered for sale on online marketplaces and traded on these platforms as objects of early modern Hasidism. A special feature of these offered tefillin scrolls is the presence of otiyyot meshunnot. Deborah argued that the question of whether the early modern Hasidic tradition preserved a particular scribal practice needs to be further explored.
Our workshop provided a venue and forum for the first international gathering of a scholarly community explicitly concerned with the subject of tagin and otiyyot meshunnot and Jewish writing practice. The many different presentations on a wide range of aspects relating to the palaeographical as well as the religious, cultural, and intellectual-historical dimensions of tagin, otiyyot meshunnot, and the writing practice of Jewish sacred texts provided many insights into ancient, mediaeval, and modern scribal traditions. At the same time, it became clear that many research questions on these complex topics are yet to be explored and resolved. We intend to publish an anthology based on the further research of our presenters. This collection of essays will be the first comprehensive and interdisciplinary publication on the subject (year of expected publication 2025), bridging at least some research gaps, clarifying open questions, and posing new ones.