Schlagwort: Torah scribes

The Jewish scribe: a guardian of secret knowledge

Anne May Dallendörfer

Scribes can generally be considered artists and craftsmen. In contexts like the Jewish one, they are first and foremost preservers of holy texts and keepers of tradition. They are thus assigned a social role of great importance and their work is subject to strict rules with regards to form and ritual purity. At times, while preserving a fixed text and the tradition which depends on it, the scribe simultaneously gains access to a knowledge that is otherwise hidden from the other community members. He thus acts as a keeper of the community’s tradition at large but also as a guardian of a secret knowledge kept and preserved by only a few.

We find one such portrayal of the scribe in the 13th century Jewish scribal manual “Barukh she-amar” which has been attributed to the scribe R. Samson ben Eliezer.[1] In this manual, R. Samson sets out to rectify many of his fellow scribes’ mistakes and negligence concerning the writing of STaM (Sefer tora, Tefillin and Mezuzot). He thereby deals extensively with the manufacture of kosher parchment and the rules for writing. One aspect of these rules is the correct form of the Hebrew letters. It is here that the author discloses that he is in possession of some hidden knowledge, as he reveals the metaphysical meaning behind the letter shapes. Concerning this latter part, however, he seems hesitant to reveal too much as these are the secret aspects of his scribal knowledge. He even calls himself a “gossip” fearing he might disclose too much. Here is an excerpt from his writing:

And here I am, “A gossip goes about telling secrets” (Proverbs 11:13) with a little allusion for those who understand in accordance with my limited understanding. Although in my sins I am not worthy to allude to these great secrets which even hinting at [the fact] that I have a little knowledge [of them] is forbidden to me.

Perhaps the prohibition to share these “great secrets” hidden in the letter shapes is just a rhetorical device to give more weight and a sense of importance to his ensuing words. Nonetheless, throughout Rabbi Samson’s writing, one senses an underlying fear that this knowledge might fall into the wrong hands, much of which “was not given to be written.”

Though he finds himself unworthy to share these great secrets, he nonetheless does so, albeit in a quite enigmatic way:

For the dalet points out that the ‘ayin is kneset Israel and the oral Tora, the bride mentioned in Song of Songs, and she is Bakol the daughter of Abraham our father, and she is the kingdom of the house of David, and this dalet which is in eḥad is a thick one. And the vav which is on top of [the dalet] hints that the tav is the six ends [of the world] and a looking glass, it is the bundle of life, the tree of life, and the written Tora, and the two tagin which are on the vav hint at Bina and Ḥokhma the supreme, preceding and splendid, until Ein Sof.

Whatever these symbols hidden in the shape of the letters dalet and vav might mean, R. Samson ends with the comment:

And our rabbis, blessed be their memory, and the learned will understand. And the Lord, may He be blessed, revealed to me wonders from His Tora because of His great name.

It seems clear that Rabbi Samson believed that in his profession as a scribe he had witnessed “wonders” from the Tora through which he had received knowledge of the great secrets of God. In their form and shape, the Hebrew letters allude to symbols whose meaning is not self-explanatory at first sight. It is down to the scribe to learn, preserve and pass on this knowledge – to those who understand. Besides continuing the textual tradition, in learning the correct shape of the Hebrew letters the scribe acts as a preserver of a secret knowledge about God which is otherwise hidden from the uninitiated.

[1] It has been subject to debate whether R. Samson really was the author or whether certain excerpts can be attributed to others. The themes explored in the passage mentioned here have also been connected with his student Yom Tov Lipmann.

A competition among letters

Which will be the first one in the Torah (and how does this relate to a Torah scroll)?

Rebecca Ullrich

Anyone skimming through Midrash Bereshit Rabba comes across a very striking passage. In the name of Rabbi Yonah, quoting Rabbi Levi, a question is raised: Why was the world created with the letter „Beit,“ the second letter of the alphabet? Initially, it is stated that one should not explore what was before the creation of the world because the letter ב is closed off on its right side and open on its left; it is closed to the past, but open to the future.

This is followed by an interpretation by Rabbi Yehudah ben Pazzi in the name of Bar Kappara. He answers this question by explaining that the letter ב, with its numerical value 2, indicates that God created two worlds, this world and the world to come. After further interpretations in the name of various rabbis, the interpretation of Rabbi Elazar bar Chanina in the name of Rav Acha follows – and proves particularly interesting:

„For 26 generations, the letter Aleph protested before the throne of God and criticised the Lord of the world: „I am the first of the letters, and you did not create your world with me!“ The Holy One, blessed be He, said to the letter, „The world and its filling were created only because of the merit of Torah, for it says: (Prov 3:19) „Adonai set the earth with wisdom“. Tomorrow I will give the Torah at Sinai and will open the beginning only with you, for it is said: (Exo 20:2) „I (אנכי) am Adonai your God“. „

Genesis Rabba 1,10

God, who presents here a midrash of his own in the style of the rabbis, lets the letter Aleph wait until the next day when he will give Israel the Torah at Sinai, which will begin with an Aleph. According to God, he did not create the world because of a letter, but solely because of the merit of the Torah and to have his teachings obeyed.

This small passage is only one of several instances in rabbinic literature in which letters appear as actors. Genesis Rabbah 47:1, for instance, offers an interpretation in which the letter Yud, the smallest of all Hebrew letters, complains about having been removed from the name of Sarah (Sarah’s name was initially Sarai (Gen 17:15). God calms this letter down too, explaining that he had taken it from the end of a woman’s name and would now put it at the beginning of a man’s name: „And Moses called Hosea bin Nun Yehoshua“ (Num 13:16).

Around the 10th-11th century, more so-called „Smaller Midrashim“ appear that adopt the motif of personifying letters that give life to them. Apart from the beginning of the midrash „Asseret haDibrot“ („Midrash on the Ten Commandments“), the alphabet midrash, attributed to Rabbi Aqiva, is probably the best-known text in which letters appear personified: with voices, emotions and feelings. In this text, which has come down to us in various versions, the letters appear in reverse order before God, from the last to the first letter in the alphabet, one after the other. They ask Him to create the world with them, with interpretations of their forms and decorations.

Rabbinic literature includes several other short texts about more specific phenomena, such as letters to be written in larger or smaller font sizes, as well as letters that receive tagin („crowns“) or a certain dot. These special shapes and decorations are often found in Torah scrolls. Some of them also feature in Masoretic traditions. If so, they are discussed without justification as to why these letters have special features. Later scribal literature, such as Meiri’s Qeriyat Sefer, include lists of letters that need to be written in a larger font size.

The „Smaller Midrashim“ take this a step further and justify these phenomena, discussing, for example, the enlarged spelling of the letter „Beit“ (ב) of בראשית (Gen 1:1) in Torah scrolls. The reason given for the larger spelling of the letter is „that it precedes everything in the Scriptures.“ In the Shema Israel (Dt 6:4-9), too, there are two letters to be written larger in the first verse: The letter ע in שמע („hear“) and the letter ד in אחד („one“). The larger dalet in „Echad“ is needed, so the explanation, to prevent confusion between the letters “Dalet” (ד) and „Resh“ (ר), which look fairly similar, and mistakenly reading „another“ (אחר) instead of “one”. The enlarged letters are reminders for the correct pronunciation of the word at hand. Thus, in these rabbinic texts, letters become carriers of a message: They are assigned attributes in addition to their function of representing a sound. This way, they can also function as memory aids for motifs and events that should be remembered at this point in the text.

Keset HaSofer – How a halakhic scribal guide came to be

Katharina Hadassah Wendl

One day, R. Shlomo Ganzfried (1804-1886) came across a book about Jewish scribal laws while browsing a book stall at a local market in Debrecen. He was working as a merchant throughout Eastern Hungary selling wine, but in his heart, he was a Torah scholar. He had studied under R. Zwi Hirsch Heller (1776-1834) in both Ungvar and Bonyhad during his youth, but later entered the mercantile world to sustain his family. Coming across this book changed his life quite significantly.

As his grandson R. Jechezkel Banet (1862-1913) tells in his preface to R. Ganzfried’s posthumously published Shem Shlomo (Süd-Vorahl, 1908), he found there a commentary on a few chapters of the Shulchan Arukh relevant to writing Torah scrolls called Bnei Yona (Prague, 1803). This commentary was published in 1803. It is based, though, on manuscripts by R. Yona Landsofer (1678-1712) – alive a century earlier. Slightly disorganised and more manuscript than a structured elaboration on Jewish scribal laws, this book was the only one available during his time that attempted to explain Jewish scribal laws for scribes. And it made R. Shlomo Ganzfried want to write his own.

Despite not having had any formal training as a Jewish scribe himself, R. Ganzfried was determined to improve the intellectual landscape concerning halakhic scribal guides. He set out to study the laws of writing Torah scrolls, Tefillin, Mezuzot and Megillot Esther; summarising them in an accessible way for the budding scribe of the 19th century. Keset HaSofer, his very first book on Halakha published in 1835 in Ofen (Budapest), concisely and systematically presents these laws. Accompanied by an enthusiastic approbation by R. Moshe Schreiber (Chatam Sofer, 1762-1839), the leading rabbi of traditional Orthodoxy in Hungary at that time, it was highly successful. As a response, R. Ganzfried published a second, expanded edition of Keset HaSofer in 1871 (Ungvar).

Shlomo Ganzfried: 
Sefer Keset HaSofer. Ofen: k
önigl. ungr. Universitäts-Buchdruckerei, 1835. Cover page. 
© National Library of Israel, 2023.

Within a few years, Keset HaSofer became one of the most influential books on Jewish scribal laws. And similarly, R. Ganzfried became an influential rabbinic scholar and Dayan in Ungvar and beyond. In his Keset HaSofer, he engages with a vast array of rabbinic literature, rearranges, and summarises scribal laws for educational purposes. Quoting both Mitnagdic and Hasidic sources, he aptly balances rational and mystical ideas concerning the writing of Torah scrolls and its letters. This balanced approach is reminiscent of R. Ganzfried’s magnum opus – the Kitzur Shulchan Arukh (Ungvar, 1864) in which he delineates basic Halakhot relevant to day-to-day life. The explanations R. Ganzfried gives in Keset HaSofer and the rabbinic opinions he endorses influence our contemporary understanding of Jewish scribal laws.

Surprisingly, though, both R. Ganzfried as a rabbinic scholar and, more specifically, his book Keset HaSofer have barely received attention from academia so far. It remains unclear how R. Ganzfried set out to write Keset HaSofer and in which ways he engages with both previous and contemporary discourse. As part of the interdisciplinary project “Materialized Holiness – Torah scrolls as a codicological, theological, and sociological phenomenon of Jewish scribal culture in the Diaspora”, I want to find out how R. Ganzfried engages with rabbinic literature on Jewish scribal law. A critical edition and a comparative analysis of other halakhic scribal guides will shed light on the making of Keset HaSofer and the development of these laws in the 19th century.