Lavlor Judaica - it's here!

As a Sofer I have spent countless hours looking at letters and also studying different concepts and ideas brought down in Chazal in the field of Safrut. By definition a Sofer is a copyist, and my job is do write my Torah Scroll as uniformally and perfectly as possible, without much room for creative work.

When I started in Safrut, I even considered adopting the obsolete Mesora of Otiot Meshunot for my personal Torah, as these letters are a great medium for creative and artistic work. I quickly realized it was a bad idea, as the mesorah of these odd letters is lost and not in use, so how could I write a scroll with a lost mesora? The whole point of a Torah Scroll is adhering to the accepted mesora of our day, and that's what I did in the end.

I'm exploring my creative urge in Safrut in a different way. I developted a design concept that is rooted in a sofer's work and also in many commentaries in the Torah - the concept of the interplay between Black Fire (written letters of the Torah) and White Fire (invisble letters that surround the written letters). 

According to tradition, the white letters will be revaled in the future, and we can only ponder what they actually are. It's hard to visualize how these invisible letters will actually appear in the Torah Scroll, as our scrolls today are so simple and unidimensional. But the invisible letters are there, and it is said in the name of the Arizal that while all Jews have a corresponding letter in the Torah, this personal letter might be actually not a written letter but an invisible one located in the blank klaf (by the way, this is way many have the minhag of looking at the Torah Scroll at the time of Hagba in shul, as the Ari said that you might evetuallt peek at your letter and connect to it).

My design is an attempt to crystalize this interplay between visible and invisble letters, and I got inspired when writing my recent post on the Four Legged Shin of the Tefillin. This odd letter is precisely one of the invisible letters which surround a normative written Shin, and it got me thinking how each letter from the Hebrew alphabet can relate to others. The most obvious combination is the famous Peh-Bet interplay, which scribes always make sure to create whenever writing a Peh in the Torah (with a small inner Bet). But there are many other possibilities, for example, a Yud inside a Kuf and so on. 

My first design variation is called Black and Color Fire, which is the best way to visualize how a black letters might be surrounded by many other invisible letters (represented by the colored letters) at any given time.

Then you have the fully colored design, called Color Fire, which is more uniform and perhaps more pleasing to the eye.

Lastly, I made a B&W version called Black and White Fire, which was the hardest but surely my favorite. It was a challenge to form the letters using only grayscale colors, because it's harder to spot the different letters around the canvas. It brings me back to the black and white scheme of the Torah Scroll, which is the pallete I always face when writing.

These designs are available for everyday items, as there's no reason why we should not be constantly reminded of the sanctity of the Hebrew letters and their relevance to our daily lives. While a Torah Scroll is mostly kept safe out of eyesight, my design is made with our modern world in mind and with the intention of bringing scribal ideas out in the wild. You have shabbos mugs, backpacks, phone cases and pillows. Soon you will be able to buy Mezuzot as well. It's more traditional then my wacky Banana art Mezuzah, which was really my first attempt at creating a Judaica piece.

This is my Judaica collection, Lavlor Judaica.

 

The Tefillin's Four-Legged Shin

The Tefillin shel Rosh has the distinctive feature of possessing a regular Shin in its right side, and a bizarre four legged Shin in the opposite side. Considering that the Tefillin is a very popular and publicly displayed Mitzva, most people are aware of this strange four-legged Shin but few know the story behind it. We we will explore this topic in this post.

The Talmud in Shabbat 62a and in Menachot 35a brings in the name of Abaye that the "Shin, Daled and Yud of the Tefillin are all 'Halacha LeMoshe Misinai'" i.e. an oral tradition dating back to Sinai. The comentators note that there are allusions to the Daled and Yud in the Tefillin's knots, and these allusions are not literal but rather loosely based in the letters Daled and Yud - see diagram on the right. Only the Shin is clearly written as a full fledged letter.

Before we delve into the Shin, which stands out from the other two letters, it's worthwhile mentioning the great controversy in regards to the Daled which is related to our topic - how to identify the letters in the Tefillin.

Up to a few hundred years ago, all communities - Ashkenazi, Sephardi and Yemenite - had the same Daled-style knot in the back of the head and it looked like a square knot (also referred to as Double Daled knot) - see image below. Looking at the Original Daled (below), it's not immediatedly evident the resemblance to the letter Daled but if you consider two Daleds, connected to each other, you can arrive at that picture. Then it came the "new Daled", which is more like a single letter Daled and more immediatedly identifiable.

Rabbi Fleckless (1754-1826), a student of the Noda BiYuda, writes in his response (link here) that we must keep the established square knot, and refrain from adopting the "new daled knot which has surfaced around 50 years ago... and we only have our tradition to rely on (square Daled)". We can gather that the new Daled shape (also called Single Daled knot) was introduced in the 18th century by the influence of Kabbalah, and Rabbi Fleckless (like his teacher) was a staunch traditionalist and fought any changes introduced by Hassidim based on Kabbalistic ideas (other changes include the Leshem Yichud prayers before Miztvot, which I explored in an earlier post).

The new, single Daled knot proved to be very popular and with the expansion of the Hassidic movement in Europe and also with the wide adoption of Kabala by the Sephardic communities, the Single Daled eventually became the standard knot present in most Tefillins sold in the marketplace. I've seen this phenomena in my own family - while my grandfather has the square knot, most of my cousins today have single Daled knots in their Tefillins - only because the new Daled is the standard in the shops and they didn't pay attention. 

From this discussion, we can already glean that the letters in the Tefillin are very loosely based on the actual scribal letters used in scrolls and not meant to be actual letters. The same used to be the case with the Shin - it wasn't originally a full fledged letter as we have today in our Tefillins, and like the Daled knot - which with time evolved to be more clearly identified with the letter - the Shin also underwent transformations.

While the Talmud does not elaborate on the nature of the Shin, early sources point out to a possibility that the original allusion to Shin was actually just the actual shape of the Tefillin shel Rosh - the four different compartments resemble the Shin when looked straight on (or from the back) - see picture to the right. Rav Elyakim, a tosafist (quoted by the 13th century work Or Zarua), brings this possible explanation along with the more popular and accepted tradition - writing the shape of the Shin in the sides of the box. 

The Box itself looking like a Shin of 4 heads (black part)

Also possible to observe a traditional Shin of 3 heads if you focus in between the compartments

Notwithstanding this novel Shin allusion brought by Rav Elyakim, the prevailing custom throughout the ages evidently is to write Shins on the sides of the boxes. The earliest clear mention of the Shins in the sides of the Tefillin is the Shimusha Raba (who, by the way, has a different order of the four parshiot in the Tefillin unlike Rashi and R. Tam - explored here), an ancient work on Tefillin from the Gaonic period (roughly 589-1000CE):

"צורה דשין דימינא ג' רישי, ודשמאלא ד'

רישי, ואי אפיך לית לן בה"

"The shape of the right Shin is with three heads, and of the left is four heads. And if he made the opposite, it is of no concern"

Note how this passage only talks about three and four heads - that’s no coincidence; the original tradition was to write only the Shin lines without a base. The base of the Shin was the actual Tefillin Box base, serving as a flat base, as we learn from the talmud the the Shin should be touching the base (וצריך שיגיע חריץ למקום התפר) and the lines were not even very clear scribal letter - just lines (see below).

Ancient Tefillin, where the Shins are only lines touching the box base (source). See another example here

A scribal shin without a base, as per Yemenite custom 

As time passed, people started to made the Shin look more and more like the scribal shin, abandoning an allusion to an actual literal interpretation, leaving no mistake that this is a Shin. However, the Tefillin producers were carefull to always make sure the Shin is touching the base of the box even with the modified custom. 

Rabbi Yosef Karo writes explicitly, that "he heard that the Ashkenazi Jews make the Shins as simple lines... but we make them as actual printed letters... and go out to see what is the custom today (printed letters)". (see source here, midway through the page: ושמעתי שהאשכנזים נזהרים בכך, שמקמטים העור במלקט על ידי כפילה שכופל מהעור עד שנעשים סעיפי השיני"ן בחקיקת ירכות. אבל אנו נוהגים לעשות השיני"ן בדפוס, וגם בארחות חיים כתוב שיש אומרים שאין לחוש בזה, ופוק חזי מאי עמא דבר, עד כאן לשונו)

It is clear that the Shin in the Tefillin went through some significant transformation over time. Rabbeinu Simcha even writes that one should not "change from the old minhag of simple lines. If he wrote as an actual printed letter...we don't have the power to invalidate it" - a clear indication that he favors the early custom. (in hebrew:  וזה לשון הגהות בברוך שאמר, בשם רבינו שמחה: ושי"ן אין לשנותה ממנהג זקנים, שהיו עושין בקמט של עור הבית. ומיהו אם עשאה בדפוס, או כתבה בדיו על בית לבן, אין בידינו לפוסלה, עד כאן לשונו)

Now that we have established the two options of displaying the two Shins - either simultaneously in the shape of the actual box of the Tefillin or as two actual letters in the sides - we must understand what is the need of showing the second Shin. 

There are two forms of writing in Hebrew. One is what is referred to as “Moshe Rabeinu’s writing”, which is the standard writing method of a quill and parchment. The other writing form is the Ktav of the Luchot - Decalog, which was not written as a Torah Scroll but through carving in stone - and it was a Godly work,  delivered to Moshe at Sinai. In this form of writing, the letters are formed by the surrounding space made from stone. The letters themselves are hollow, nothing on their own. When writing a Shin, the surrounding space of the standard Shin looks like a four-legged Shin. 

According to Kabbala, the written Torah is only a part of our Torah - the surrounding spaces (i.e. negative spaces) are also part of the Torah but they are not revealed to us readily. They are mostly concealed, but they can make up sentences and a whole different level of teachings. 

The extra Shin is there to symbolize the hidden Torah from the surrounding letters, perhaps to remind us we only have access to part of the Torah. We can only speculate about the novel letters and wordings that will be revealed in later days, but I have seen an interesting drawing that helps illustrate how many possibilities there can be. 

Interporsing possible wordings within letters

Famous interplay between Pei and inner Bet

The Arizal (quoted here ) says that a person should look at the Torah Scroll after the weekly portion, when the Torah is displayed to the congregation (hagba’a), because every Jew has a corresponding letter in the Torah and perhaps he will find his if he looks for it. 

I've also heard in the name of the Ari, a person who yearns for wealth will have a letter connected to a word or sentence in the Torah relating to money. Someone who is drawn to helping people or healing people will be drawn to a letter corresponding to this topic. But, says the Arizal, a Jew can have not a letter but an empty space surrounding the letter of the Parsha and that carries meaning and relates to the person in some esoteric way. Hence, the written and blank spaces in the Torah scroll are equally important, and that is the message of the two Shins in the Tefillin.

I suspect that this can also explain one well established scribal tradition in the beginning of the Torah. While the tradition relating to extra tagim in the Torah as brought by the ancient Sefer HaTagim has been lost, scribes still do four extra tagim in the Bet of Bereishit - one of the very few surviving extra Tagim in our modern day Torahs. Perhaps these four lines convey the same message of the four-legged Shin of the Tefillin - it relates to the other writing form which was found in the Luchot. While our Torah Scroll is written in the traditional way, we keep tagim that look a four-legged Shin in the very first letter of  the Torah to allude to the invisible Torah, just like we do in the Tefillin, because the written Torah and space surrounding it are actually one unit, although we only have access to the Torah we see in writing. 

As we have seen, the shape of the Shin in the Tefillin evolved through time and it carries a great deal of symbolism. The Shin is also the main feature of the Mezuza, which has the Shin Daled Yud inscribed in the outside of the parchment and the widespread custom is to write a Shin in the outside of the Mezuza case - similar to what’s done in the Tefillin shel Rosh. The Tefillin and Mezuza have this commonality, and  they stand out in regards to the importance attached to the Shin, one of Judaism‘a most mystical and beautiful letters.

I conclude with the Talmud in Brachot 6a:

א"ר אבין בר רב אדא א"ר יצחק מנין שהקב"ה מניח תפילין שנאמר (ישעיהו סב, ח) נשבע ה' בימינו ובזרוע עוזו בימינו זו תורה שנאמר (דברים לג, ב) מימינו אש דת למו ובזרוע עוזו אלו תפילין שנאמר (תהלים כט, יא) ה' עוז לעמו יתן ומנין שהתפילין עוז הם לישראל דכתי' (דברים כח, י) וראו כל עמי הארץ כי שם ה' נקרא עליך ויראו ממך ותניא ר' אליעזר הגדול אומר אלו תפילין שבראש 

In short, the Talmud says that even God himself dons the Tefillin (!) and that the Tefillin relate to the passage "all the people of the world will see the name of Hashem in you, and they will fear you" - they will see the Tefillin shel Rosh and become fearful. Throughout the ages, the Tefillin has been a staple of Jewish life with amulet-like status, and archeologists even found them in Qumran, dating over 2000 years, and they look very similar to ours today - that alone, a great feat and giant testament of how well we kept our traditions, if if there were some minor tweaks in the body of the Tefillin.

Tefillin found in Qumran (source)

Mezuza Art

Mezuza Art! 

How far can Judaica art go? 

In my opinion, it hasn’t gone far enough. Of course, there must be respect and reverence to the subject matter - holy scrolls that need to be treated as such. With that said, it’s hard to find Judaica items that are modern or inspired in pop-art, for example. 

Perhaps this has to do with the history of the Jewish people, who often needed to hide their religious items or at least be discreet. But in the present time such concerns no longer apply, and at the same time art has become ubiquitous and present in most homes - even if their Mezuza cases are passable. I think modern art can elevate Jewish practice in a very unique way, infusing it with added symbolism and imagination. 

Not long ago, M. Cattelan was able to elevate a simple banana into a 6 figure art piece (sarcastically called Comedian), which has become an instant pop art hit. This is my prototype for my house’s Mezuza case, which is suitable for 10cm Mezuza scroll. I needed a way to add the traditional Shin to the case, so I used the theme of Chiquita bananas, which is the most popular brand here in Europe. A mezuza case inspired by a banana pop artpiece? Why not. If we keep it respectful, a Mezuza Banana art case can be a tool towards elevating your home and perhaps showing that if a banana artpiece hung in a wall can fetcha whooping U$120,000 price tag, our Mezuzot are surely worth more. Or is this only good enough for Purim? 

Chesed,Gevurah and the Tagim

I sent my Mezuza to be checked by an expert sofer and the first thing he pointed out to me concerns the Tagim of the Shaatnez Getz letters. He told me that the Tag on the right should be higher that the Tag on the left, something I never heard before. In the picture below you can see that in my Shin, the taguim in the left and in the right are as tall - according to this Minhag, the one in the right should be higher.


This expert sofer noted that today many Rabbis require the sofrim to write all Tagim like this, much like the widespread Minhag of making the right-hand Tag of the Lamed higher than the left-side Tag (see pic in the right).

But what's the reason?

According to the Kaballa, the right symbolizes Chesed, kindness, while the left symbolizes Gevurah, austerity, and this concept is often times mentioned by Chassidic Rebbes. That's the same underlying reason why the strings of the Tefillin Shel Rosh should be longer on the right side than in the left side - we always try to ensure that Chesed is in more evidence.

Not long ago, a Chassidic Rabbi was in my parents house and they asked him for a Bracha for Parnassa. The Rebbe asked them to check if the Mezuzas of the house had the right-hand Tagim higher than the left-side ones, since Parnassa is connected to Chesed and therefore having the high right Tag is a Bracha for Parnasa.

I often times do a "rainbow" Tag (see below) when two or three Shaatnez Getz letters appear together, but it seems that I will have to stop it if I am to comply with this Minhag - in the rainbow Tag the Tag of the right is the smallest.

Pic: Zoomed Shin

Aside from Safrut, I love photography and I wanted to post this cool pic, which I took using my diamond lupe. This is my soon-to-be-completed Meggilat Shir Hashirim and I zoomed in the Shin because I just love this letter, and with the lupe you can take a deeper look in it. It's very easy to mess-up this letter since everything is "squashed" together - the three Yuds and the Taguim. Next to it you can see a Yud and it's lower Tag (lower left side), which is mandatory according to Rabbeinu Tam.

I hope to finish this Megilla in the next two weeks and I will post more pictures.

Chag Sameach