Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Welcome!

I think I should write a little introduction explaining the story behind this blog.

I started blogging a few years ago about Jewish Music, in a time where Jewish Music was a major interest for me. There weren't many blogs about it and I knew I had interesting things to share, so I started YK's Jewish Music Forum.

After these years, my interest has shifted towards different things, although I still like JM. Most importantly, I decided to fulfill a childhood dream and started a Sofer Stam program with a well-known sofer in Jerusalem, just few months ago. Suddenly, Safrut became a major field of interest and I'm spending a large part of my time doing extensive research about it. I can safely say that this is a very fertile subject, with tons of amazing and puzzling finds.

I wanted to develop a database so I would not forget all the cool things I came across and I realized that blogging about it will do just that. Granted, this is a topic much less "in" than Jewish Music and I'm not hoping to attract the masses here, but this is a blog that is really missing in the web. The Safrut blogs out there are few and I haven't found one that is run by a stereotype Sofer - male orthodox Jew; all of them are run by people out of this segment. There are also a few "Soferets" - woman scribes - who have blogs but again, very very few blogs run by the typical Sofer.

I'm not a professional Sofer - I started Safrut as a hobby and I don't sell any of my works. I'm young and have no beard, but I am strictly Orthodox and I think it's vital to have at least one blog that represents the majority of the Sofrim.

But aside from that, I'm starting something grand over here. The real reason why I became a Sofer was my desire to write my own Sefer Torah, in compliance with the Mitzva of Kitvu Lachem et Hashira Hazot - there's a miztva for every Jew to write his own Torah and I'm planning to actually do it myself. This blog will broadcast this major journey and I will hopefully be posting my progress here. This objective is very very challenging, perhaps one of the most arduous Mitzvot out there, but I will try my best. May G-d Help Me!

To those of you who know my music blog, I favor quality over quantity when it comes to blog posts. I will not post daily, rather, I tend to write longer and more detailed posts, which are pretty much small articles on a specific topic. For the basics of Stam you can find other resources in the web; here I will go a little deeper and write about things you most probably never heard before. So stay tuned, add me to your RSS list (that will be the best way to follow this) and wish me luck.

3 comments:

Mordechai Pinchas/Marc Michaels said...

Hi YK. My blogger blog isn't really the place where I leave stuff. It's really the website at www.sofer.co.uk and I'm not even sure I can describe myself as reform anymore since most of my practice is now rather orthodox. Great blog.
PS the link to Mordechai doesn't work but thanks for the plug.

YK said...

I'm sorry for quoting you erroneously then, I will fix it.
It doesn't really makes a difference what's your affiliation, in any case you are extremely knowledgeable in this subject and I think we can all learn a lot from each other's experiences.

I will also fix the links.

YK

AB said...

beautill articles and postings