The Last Two Lines of Shirat Hayam

This post is related to my last post on Shirat Haazinu - you might want to read that first.

The Talmud in Megillah 16b states:

אָמַר רַבִּי חֲנִינָא בַּר פָּפָּא, דָּרֵשׁ רַבִּי שֵׁילָא אִישׁ כְּפַר תְּמַרְתָּא: כּל הַשִּׁירוֹת כּוּלָּן נִכְתָּבוֹת אָרִיחַ עַל גַּבֵּי לְבֵינָה

Rabbi Chanina (...) says all songs are written a small brick (writing) above a brick (blank space), and a brick above a small brick.

The Talmud here is referring to the classic brick-and-mortar layout which is featured in all Torah Scrolls throughout time - 30 lines beggining with Az Yashir ending at Betoch Hayam. The layout is easily attainable up to the last two lines, which are much longer and therefore present a problem for the scribe - how should they be written?

Looking at historical and more recent scrolls, one can find three completely different arrangements of the last two lines, and the underlying discussion is if the two last lines are at all part of the Shirat Hayam. Unlike the other lines, the last two are not written in poetic language, and seem to revert back to the narrative preceding the Shirat Hayam - perhaps an indication that this section is different from the rest.

The first Mesora we have relies on this understanding and it has the last two lines written in regular prose, without any special layout or spacing. This tradition was popular in earlier times specially in Ashkenaz and proponents of this opinion bring a proof from our prayers in Shacharit, which repeats Hashem Yimloch LeOlam Vaed in the 27th line. This repetition indicates the ending of the song, similar to Psalm 150 which has the last pasuk repeated in morning prayers כל הנשמה תהלל יה הללו־יה, indicating the end of the psalms of praise. In any event, this structure is straightforward and easy to write - see below some examples:

This layout has fallen out of use in the last few hundred years, even though there's Halachic basis for it and it also seems to "fit" well in the overall symmtry of the text.

The second Mesora is assymetrical, and divides these two lines with one blank space causing the text to look different than the preceding lines. This layout is found in the most important historical Torahs and codices, including the Leningrad Codex , the Bologna Torah and finally Ashkar fragment (the oldest witness of them all - it only has a few pages and Shirat Hayam is one of them, and you can see the layout of the last two lines if looking attentively).

Leningrad Codex:

Bologna Torah:

Ashkar fragment - hard to see but look closely

The Yemenite Torah scrolls have this layout too, and that's always a reliable indication of how ancient and well established this Mesora was in earlier times.

We now turn to the third layout, mentioned by Rabbi Menachem Meiri in his scribal work Keriat Sefer. The Meiri brings that Rabbi Meir Halevy Aboulafia (source here) he had in his possesion a booklet that was allegedly a reliable copy of the Rambam's text but Rabbi Aboulafia was unconfortable about the featured layout of the last two lines of Shirat HaYam found there, which looked like this:

Rabbi Aboulafia (known as the "Rama") held that this layout cannot be correct because in all preceding 3 stanza lines lines of the Shira, the first and last stanzas only have only one word, and in this layout there are three (את מי הים) in the beggining and two words in the end (בתוך הים). He therefore used a different but similar layout when writing his own two Torahs, in this way:

His influential scribal work Masoret Seyag LaTorah championed this layout and discussed it in detail, and being very well respected by Sephardic and Ashkenazi communities alike, Rabbi Aboulafia's layout quickly became the dominant layout in the Jewish world, even though today there are many questions surrounding this custom. 

Here are some examples of scroll utilizing the Rama's layout:

13th century Sephardic scroll sold by Sotheby's:

Another 13th century Sephardic scroll, sold by Sotheby's for 250,000usd, and in the item's description it is noted that the scribe followed Rabbi Aboulafia's layout:

The Sefer Torah of another rishon, the Rabbeinu Nissim of Girona (Ran) has survived (although recent scholarship challenges this attribution - see here for a detailed analysis) and we can see this layout there too - an indication that in Sepharadic lands this layout was already widespread at this time. It's interesting to note that Rabbeinu Nissim actually tweaked the layout just a little - the very last word of the Shira - הים - is not written all the way in the end of the page, but indented a little before. Professor Penkower (here, page 25) explains that this was done in the context of creating a Parasha Petucha, but that's beyond the scope of our discussion. See here a pic I took years back when visiting the National Library of the Hebrew University, and look closely at the very last word - it's written before the end of the line:

Coming back to the second layout, we should revisit the Rambam's opinion. As we have seen, Rabbi Aboulafia's booklet was attributed to the Rambam and it allegedly featured the last line divided in three, but this booklet seems to be problematic at least in this very specific instance.

Scholars today agree that the Rambam used the second layout in the Mishne Torah and not the Rama's, as he based his text on the famous Aleppo Codex. While the Shirat Hayam part of the Aleppo Codex dissapeared in 1948, research has shown conclusively that the codex had the same layout as the other ancient scrolls we have today (Leningrad, Bologna) and therefore it's no surprise that the Yemenite tradition follows that same layout.

However when you look at our versions of the Mishne Torah, you don't see the second layout - you see the Meiri's layout. See below:

Interesting to see that my copy has a note:

Rabbi Menachem di Lonzano wrote in his Or Torah: Don't heed to the layout found in (other) editions of the Rambam because they are mistaken and are not the layout written by the Rambam - the printers made the layout from their own heart.

 *In this edition we have printed the correct layout as seen in Or Torah (the publishers)

Clearly Rabbi di Lonzano, an influential Masora expert of the 16th century, was sure that the Rambam had the Ashkenazi/Sephardi (Aboulafia) layout, but this is most certainly incorrect as we mentioned above. And by the same token, the printers' correction of the layout was a mistake too, in effect causing a censhorship of the original design used by the Rambam - similar to the censorship of Shirat Haazinu discussed in my previous post. 

Now it's possible to appreciate the work of Shabtai Frankel, a Rabbi and businessman who funded a Kolel dedicated to researching and fixing mistakes in the Rambam's Mishne Torah. His acclaimed edition is a real gem for situations like ours - see below how he printed this page, opposed to my edition above:

See here a zoom of the last lines lines:

Frankel uses the second layout we discussed above, which was featured in the Aleppo Codex and is also seen in the Leningrad Codex - and not the Ashkenazi/Sephardi layout as we have it in our Torah Scrolls. By the way, note how the last line is indented similar to Rabbeinu Nissim's Torah Scroll discussed above - I haven't seem a consensus about this indentation in the Aleppo Codex so this is surprising.

Now note how afterwards Frankel elegantly mentions the layout "according to Rabbi Aboulafia's testimony" - the three stanzas the Rama saw in the booklet attributed to the Rambam (בתוך הים in one stanza), but not the Rama's ammended version, which he felt more confortable with but as we now know, was never written by the Rambam. Frankel's edition shies away from censorship and it's refreshing to see how openly his edition deals with this controversy, but this is a recent development.

Throughout many centuries, the layout of the only two songs found in our Torah scrolls were both censored in our standard Mishne Torah versions in order to comply with the dominant Ashkenazi/Sephardi Mesora - directly against the Rambam's detailed and clear account of how the two songs should look like. This is a good example of the limited success of some of the Rambam's directives in the Mishne Torah - sometimes he succeeded to popularize Halachot but sometimes, like here, he failed (see more about the scope of the Rambam's influence on Mesora here, page 16 - article by Prof Yosef Ofer). 

It's also interesting to note that some scrolls will follow the Rambam's ruling in Shirat Hayam but not in Shirat Haazinu, although most will follow Rabbi Aboulafia in both songs. Dr Shlomo Zucker, when analyzing a unique old scroll auctioned by Sotheby's, notes that these small nuances allow us to identify a Torah's origin:

"The fact that the present scroll presents the Maimonidean division of the Song at the Sea and the Abulafian version of the Song of Moses is a clear indication that it was written in Spain. In Sephardic Torah-scrolls written after the expulsion in the lands of the Sephardic diaspora, both songs are always according to Meir ha-Levi Abul'afia, while only the Yemenites follow Maimonides' order in both songs."

Rabbi Mordechai Breuer, one of the leading experts of the Aleppo Codex, conducted many studies of this codex versus the others and the result was always a clear superiority of the Aleppo Codex - exactly what the Rambam said almost 1000 years ago about this same codex, which he used for his own Sefer Torah. Rabbi Breuer even wondered if a new community in a new land should perhaps adopt his edition based on the Aleppo Codex for their Torah Scrolls, like the Rambam had hoped for (source: Yosef Ofer, The Masora on scripture and its methods).

While the scribes did eventually adopt the Aleppo Codex as the basis for scrolls of the Neviim and Ketuvim - there was no unified Mesora until the appearance of this codex - in regards to the Torah scrolls history has taken a different path and everyone continues to follow our Mesora, based on the Rama's ruling. Or as Rabbi Sorkin puts it, using a play with words from Exodus 14,  ובני ישראל יצאים ביד רמה - the Jewish People fulfill their obligation with the "Yad Rama" (name of another famous book from Rabbi Abulafia), i.e. we rely on the Rama's opinion to fulfil the Mitzva of Writing a Torah Scroll and this is the undisputed Halacha for almost a milennia.

- this article was based extensively on the excellent article by Y. M. Sorkin, entitled אריח על גבי לבינה.

Shirat Haazinu: 70 or 67 lines?

One of the few columns that stand out in a Sefer Torah is Shirat Hayam, with its “brick and mortar” shape, and Haazinu, with its “two towers” shape. As a general rule, the Torah Scroll has small blank spaces scattered around every column, and they serve to delineate paragraphs and to provide to the reader a moment of reflection.

I have written about the importance of the correct placement of these blank spaces, called in Rabbinic parlance Parshiot Petuchot and Setumot, in an older post and I encourage you to look there too.

But as a whole, the Torah layout is a continuous prose in all its columns, save the two instances mentioned above. Both are songs, and it seems that the unusual layout is intended to highlight their poetic structure. Commentators offer more esoteric explanations, that the two towers Haazinu layout allude to the downfall of the wicked, which are mentioned in one of the stanzas (this explanation is also applied to the two tower layout of Haman's wicked sons in Esther's Scroll, discussed here).

The Rambam dedicates many pages to the correct layout of all Parshiot in the Torah, and he writes that Shirat Haazinu should be divided in 70 lines. Look at the text in Sefaria:

צוּרַת שִׁירַת הַאֲזִינוּ - כָּל שִׁיטָה וְשִׁיטָה יֵשׁ בָּאֶמְצַע רֶוַח אֶחָד כְּצוּרַת הַפָּרָשָׁה הַסְּתוּמָה. וְנִמְצָא כָּל שִׁיטָה חֲלוּקָה לִשְׁתַּיִם. וְכוֹתְבִין אוֹתָהּ בְּשִׁבְעִים שִׁיטוֹת. וְאֵלּוּ הֵן.

That’s indeed how our Torahs (see example pic at the top of this post) are structured - both Ashkenazi and Sephardi scrolls - in accordance to the Rambam’s account and we would expect that to be the case, as the Rambam had in his possession the prized Aleppo Codex - the most authoritative codex according to our tradition.

The Yemenite Jews have a handful differences in their Mesora of the Torah text, minor differences in the spellings but one very visible variance stands out. Their parshat Haazinu is written in 67 lines, unlike Ashkenazi and Sephardic scrolls.

When looking closely, they have a different arrangement in three stanzas, which are merged together forming a longer, more squeezed, line. Because of that, the layout of their Haazinu column is much less homogenic and the “two towers” are not perfectly aligned. See a picture of the Yemenite tikkun:

We all know the Teimanim follow the rulings of the Rambam closely, which in turn begs the question - how do they reconcile their Mesora with the Rambam?

Let’s turn to the Aleppo Codex again. As I discussed elsewhere, this codex is attributed to the Masorete Ben Asher, and was salvaged from the Aleppo synagogue pillaging in the 1947 Arab protests against the establishment of the State of Israel..

The local Sephardi community guarded the Codex closely, and very few outsiders managed to find a way to look at it. One of the few was Humberto Cassuto, a famous scholar who wanted to investigate if this Codex was indeed the one attributed to the Ben Asher lineage. Professor Cassuto was granted limited access and couldn’t study it throughly, but he cast doubt at the provenance of the Codex because he saw that the Haazinu of the Codex had 67 lines, and not 70 lines as discussed in the Rambam’s Mishne Torah.

Many scholars started to investigate this finding. It turned out that the Yemenites have a different reading of the Rambam and in their manuscripts it states that Haazinu has 67 lines - just like Professor Cassuto observed in the Codex, except he wasn’t aware that his own Rambam’s edition was corrupted. The very feature Prof Cassuto found to be suspicious turned out to be the best proof of the authenticity of the Codex. An early manuscript of the Rambam from Oxford's collection has the same version as the Yemenites, and that's how Mechon Mamre has it in their online Rambam:

יא  צוּרַת שִׁירַת הַאֲזִינוּ (דברים לב,א-מג)--כָּל שִׁטָּה וְשִׁטָּה, יֵשׁ בְּאֶמְצָעָהּ רֵוַח אֶחָד כְּצוּרַת הַפָּרָשָׁה הַסְּתוּמָה, וְנִמְצֵאת כָּל שִׁטָּה חֲלוּקָה לִשְׁתַּיִם; וְכוֹתְבִין אוֹתָהּ בְּשֶׁבַע וְשִׁשִּׁים שִׁטּוֹת.  וְאֵלּוּ הֶן

Although almost all the Chumash part of the Codex was destroyed (or hid away, as claimed by Matti Friedman’s great book discussed here), the Haazinu pages observed by Prof Cassuto have survived and can be seen in the Israel Museum and online. See it here:

The Yemenites kept the Rambam’s proposed Mesora (save one puzzling, small variance towards the end of Haazinu in the stanza starting with "Gam Betula" which the Yemenites start with the preceding "Gam Bachur" - the similar words seemed to have caused this confusion but perhaps there's a better explanation I'm not aware of). 

The Ashkenazi and Sephardi did not, and there was an obvious attempt to cover up the discrepancy between their tradition (70 lines) and the Rambam’s (67), and while a few expert scholars (like 16th century Menachem di Lonzanu, in his popular work Or Torah - see here at the bottom) eventually noted conflicting versions of the Mishne Torah, this caused much confusion and eventually most scholars became convinced that the versions of the Mishne Torah with 67 lines were simply wrong because they didn't comply with the vast majority of the existing scrolls.

The Ashkenazi and Sephardi structure of 70 lines has its source in the Masechet Sofrim 12 (exact link here, where it states the first word of every line totaling 70), which is one of the handful small tractates found in the Babylonian Talmud and is generally attributed to the Gaonic period. Even though the Codex was housed in Aleppo - a major Sephardic center - for a very long time, the Sephardic world adopted the 70 line tradition which was the most prevalent and based their text in Rabbi Meir Aboulafia’s (who was an opponent of the Rambam) authoritative compendium Masoret Seyag Latorah - not the Aleppo Codex. Ironically, the Aleppo community guarded the Codex as its prized relic while following another Mesora for the Haazinu parsha (credit for the great Prof Marc Shapiro for this insight).

A few scholars have attempted to conduct studies of Torah Scrolls from different pre-war communities in regards to their Haazinu structure, in order to discover how prevalent was the 70 line structure. Scholars have found that there were more than two options - some scrolls had a little more than 70 lines while others fewer than 67, some had no unique structure at all, while others had Haazinu in the brick and mortar layout of Shirat Hayam! It seems like the scribes generally knew that Haazinu had a special layout but had limited knowledge of how to write the special structure.

The difficulty in regards to Haazinu stems from this Talmudic passage in Megillah:

אָמַר רַבִּי חֲנִינָא בַּר פָּפָּא, דָּרֵשׁ רַבִּי שֵׁילָא אִישׁ כְּפַר תְּמַרְתָּא: כּל הַשִּׁירוֹת כּוּלָּן נִכְתָּבוֹת אָרִיחַ עַל גַּבֵּי לְבֵינָה  חוּץ מִשִּׁירָה זוֹ וּמַלְכֵי כְנַעַן, שֶׁאָרִיחַ עַל גַּבֵּי אָרִיחַ וּלְבֵינָה עַל גַּבֵּי לְבֵינָה. מַאי טַעְמָא — שֶׁלֹּא תְּהֵא תְּקוּמָה לְמַפַּלְתָּן — 

Said Rabbi Hanina bar Pappa, Rabbi Shila, a man of the village of Temarta, expounded: all songs -- all of them -- are written a small brick (writing) above a brick (blank space), and a brick above a small brick, except this song (Sons of Haman) and [the song of] the kings of Canaan, which are a small brick above a small brick and a brick above a brick.

Note that Haazinu is not mentioned as one of the exceptions, and you could infer from this passage that Haazinu should be written like all other songs - in a brick and mortar fashion! That is the likely explanation of why some older scrolls have this feature - perhaps some scribes based themselves in the simple understanding of this Gemara. The Noda Biyuda discusses the Halachic status of this layout and based on this understanding he tries to find a way to not invalidate these scrolls. See below how a Haazinu in brick-and-mortar shape would look like:

However, the Masechet Sofrim is categorical, and clearly states that Haazinu is not to be written like Shirat Hayam, and that's the normative Halacha - even though the Masechet Sofrim is from the Gaonic period and hence, theoretically less authoritative than the Talmud which seems to imply that Haazinu should be written like all songs - in brick and mortar layout.

Professor Mordechai Breuer, one of the leading experts of the Aleppo Codex, attempted to harmonize the Talmudic passage above with the ruling of the Masechet Sofrim by developing the idea that Haazinu is not a real Song/Shira, and therefore not the subject of the Talmud's discussion above. In other words, Haazinu is in a category of its own and it's unlike Shirat Hayam, Bnei Haman and Shirat Devorah (see here page 23 for further discussion and a great resource in this topic).

The complexity of this Talmudic passage is the best explanation of why there's not one single option when it comes to writing Haazinu - the Talmud is ambigious and the scribes had a tough time getting it right.

However, scholarly research has shown that in both Ashkenazi (Prof Goshen-Gottstein) and Italy (see Prof. Orlit Kolodny here with more details), the most common layout was undoubtedly the 70 line structure, as per the Masechet Sofrim. Less than 10% of the 250+ scrolls surveyed have the 67 layout, which means that the Rambam/Yemenite Mesora was actually not very popular. While the Rambam tried to push for the 67 Mesora in his very detailed account of how Haazinu should be written, it seems clear that already in his time this Mesora was not dominant and his initiative did not gain much traction in the wider Jewish world. The fact that the Rambam's manuscript was censored to conform with the 70 line Mesora is an indication that there was a push back to the Rambam's directive, and the censorship (see more about this in Prof Marc Shapiro's "Changing the Immutable") was a very efficient way to safeguard the prevalent Mesora of the Masechet Sofrim - it even fooled an expert scholar like Prof Cassuto.

Rabbi Meir's Torah

"בתורתו של רבי מאיר מצאו כתוב, "והנה טוב מאד" (בראשית א, לא) - "והנה טוב מות" (בראשית רבה וילנא, ט, ה)

"ויעש ה' אלקים לאדם ולאשתו כותנות עור וילבישם" (בראשית ג, כא). בתורתו של ר' מאיר מצאו כתוב: "כותנות אור" (בראשית רבה תיאודור-אלבק, כ, כא)

This Medrash says that Rabbi Meir’s Torah had some variant readings distinct from our mainstream Mesora. Instead of טוב מאד, his text was טוב מות; instead of כותנות עור, he had כותנות אור. 

This is a puzzling and difficult concept to understand. The Talmud (Eiruvim 13a) says that Rabbi Meir was an expert Sofer, who learned by the foremost leaders of his generation - Rabbi Yishmael and Rabbi Akiva. 

While a small variant reading of עור and אור is a relatively minor issue, Rabbi Meir’s other variant - טוב מות - seems completely different and unrelated to the mainstream text. What can be the connection between טוב מאד and טוב מות, which was highlighted by Chazal as a point of variance between two traditions ?

I usually like to follow a somewhat scholarly approach in my posts, but to answer this question I will turn to Derash. 

There are many comments about  the connection between עור and אור, mostly based one the famous Zohar that originally the skin of Adam was translucent, full of light, but after his sin it turned like our skin, hence the connection between the words. 

Exploring this concept further, I've heard in the name of Reb Tzadok Hacohen |(please comment if you have the written source)  that specifically Rabbi Meir had the unique ability to understand the ultimate purpose of everything in this world and how all connects in a meta-physical reality. In his perception, כותנות עור was very clearly not just leather clothes but clothes hiding a spiritual light and Rabbi Meir could perceive that in all creation at any given time - not only before Adam’s sin. For Rabbi Meir, all creation was connected and he saw how that worked.

What about the connection of מאד and מות? 

If we take Reb Tzakok’s insight a step further, that our traditions and Rabbi Meir's reflect two different worldviews, let’s analyze why this specific variant has been highlighted. Both מאד and מות start with the Mem, the middle letter of the Hebrew alphabet and the letter representing the present time. We can see that Rabbi Meir could start from the Mem and perceive the very end-objective of everything, and this is codified in the word מות, going from the Mem directly to the Tav - the final letter of the alphabet and the ultimate goal. 

However, our perception is not like Rabbi Meir’s, and we cannot connect all the dots of the world around us. The best we can do is try to go back to how things started and from there try to find meaning. That’s the מאד - starting from the Mem, going to back to the Aleph which is the symbol of Hashem’s unity and then to the Daled, which is the letter highlighting how Hashem interacts with our world. That’s our approach to dealing with this world (see more about this concept in Ari Bergmann's podcast here).

Hence we find a possible connection between the two readings and how they represent differing worldview approaches, as explored by Reb Tzadok. It turned out to be that Rabbi Meir’s approach was not tenable, and the mainstream text is indeed טוב מאד. 

Of course, this discussion leads to the question of how the Torah text can have variant readings, which in turn challenges the Rambam’s view that our Masoretic text is the “immaculate text”, without any changes through time. To read a great piece on this, which requires a more scholarly approach, see this great post at the Kotzk Blog, discussing what would happen if we would find an authoritative old scroll that differs from our accepted Masoretic text. 

One possible conventional answer is brought by the Torah Temima (source), who writes that some understand the Medrash to be referring not to Rabbi Meir’s actual Torah Scroll but his written novelea, where he expounded the meaning of the Torah text. Or perhaps his marginal glosses written around his personal Torah Scroll. In other words, he had no actual variant Mesora. 

Be it as it may, as for the connection between מאד and מות, we have found that these variant readings can be understood not as a mere curiosity; it’s a hidden message highlighted by the Medrash, and up to us to understand its message.

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.

 

Preparatory Prayers in Safrut - an Overview

The Talmud in Berachos 13a mentions in passing a classic Talmudical dispute if Mitzvot need intent (מצוות צריכות כוונה) or not. For instance, if someone eats Matza in Pessach without any intent - just eats it - did he fulfill his obligation? This is a major topic of discussion that affects all Miztvot, and the Halacha seems to require a person to have some sort of intent, or at least not a negating intent, to perform the Miztva.

Many Rabbis encouraged the recital of a short pre-Miztva prayer, which usually is הרני מזמן את פי - a verbal declaration that the person is focusing in what he will shortly do. This concept is accepted by all streams of Judaism, as it is always a good idea to prepare ourselves and verbally declare that we are conscious before performing a Mitzva.

The Kabbala movement brought this concept a step further, and added another dimension to the preparatory prayers - a prayer that our Mitzva will have a mystical impact in the celestial worlds. This prayer is called לשם יחוד, and it's mentions the Shechina, the Tetragammon and how this name is divided - all very complicated and deep Kabbalah concepts - and the inclusion of this in the daily prayers was novel and controversial. The actual basic Leshem Yichud text is:

לשם ייחוד קודשא בריך הוא ושכינתיה  בדחילו ורחימו , לייחד שם י"ה בו"ה בייחודא שלים בשם כל ישראל

For the sake of the unification between the Holy Blessed One and His Shechinah with fear and love, in order to unify the Name Yood Hey and Wav Hey in perfect unity, and in the Name of all Israel.

Rabbi Landau - Noda Biyuda

Not all Rabbis were in favor of adding this prayer in everyone’s routine. Most notably, the Noda BiYehuda (Rabbi Landau d. 1791, leader of the European Jewry in the 18th century) wrote a famous sharp condemnation of those promoting the Leshem Yichud and famously declared that וחסידים יכשלו בם, paraphrasing the Pasuk ופושעים יכשלו בם - in effect, calling the Hassidim sinners, for he contended that this Kabbalistic prayer couldn't be understood even by learned scholars therefore it was not appropriate to encourage the commonfolk to recite it. One should contextualize his harsh opposition to his era - a time when Hassidism was revolutionary to conservative leaders like Rabbi Landau (parentethically, Rabbi Landau's descendants attempted to remove this "name calling" in subsequent editions of the Noda BiYehuda, as the Hassidic movement grew and remained part and parcel of normative Orthodox Judaism - source and blog post).

Rabbi Falkeles, a disciple from Rabbi Landau, testifies that he once saw a pious man asking Rabbi Landau to use his beautiful Etrog for a bracha (Etrogim were very rare in Europe at that time, even more so nice Etrogim), and when he saw the man saying a Kabbalistic preparatory prayer - Yehi Ratzon - Rabbi Landau objected and declared that no one reciting any preparatory prayers had permision to ever use his Etrogim (source here).

Rabbi Landau, like the Vilna Gaon, held that a Bracha is in itself a preparation for the Miztva and therefore there was never any need of adding prayers before saying the blessing of any Miztva. When a Mitzva has no Bracha, for example when writing a Sefer Torah, then the Noda BiYehuda concedes that a preparatory prayer is warranted, in order to confirm a person's awareness, and his actual prayer was short and to the point (source):

הנני עושה דבר זה לקיים מצות בוראי "I'm doing this in order to fulfill my Creator's Miztva"

Rabbi Jacob Emden, a contemporary of Rabbi Landau and another influential (and controversial) leader, did include the Leshem Yichud prayer in his popular Siddur, the Yavetz Siddur, however he noted that his father, the famous Chacham Tzvi Ashkenazi, used to follow Kabbalistic guidelines but was careful not to do so publicly. In other words, Rabbi Emden addresses Rabbi Landau’s concern that this prayer is not intended for everyone and advises readers to recite it privately, like his own father used to do.

Notwithstanding the objection of some traditionalist leaders, most communities around the world adopted the custom of reciting the Leshem Yichud before Mitzvot, most notably the Sephardic Jews, who had always favored the adoption of Kabbala in their daily routine, and Hasidim, whose movement was sparked by Kaballa (also why the Siddurim of the Sephardim and Hasidim are so similar). And today, even non-Chassidic communities have accepted this prayer, and one can find this prayer in the ArtScroll siddur today before Pesukei DeZimrah, for instance. Eitan Katz, a popular Jewish Music singer, even composed a Leshem Yichud song (embedded below). We can safely say that the controvery died out over the centuries, and no one will scream at you for saying such prayer today, anywhere.

Most German Jews, who follow the Ashkenaz minhag did not adopt the Leshem Yichud as they generally followed the opinion of the Noda BiYuda. It’s also interesting to note that Belz Chassidim to this day have the custom of not saying Leshem Yichud before Birkat Sefirat HaOmer in the Yahrtzeit of the Noda BiYuda, which falls in Sefirat HaOmer, in deference to his position.

updated: The previous Zanz Rebbe, the Shefa Chaim, is one of the only Hasidic personalities who sided with the Noda Biyuda and to this day, Zanz hasidim do not say Leshem Yichud on Sefirat Haomer. In the compendium of Zanz minhagim "Halichot Chaim", it's written that the Rebbe would never say Leshem Yichud on other mitzvot as well, with the notable exception of when arranging the Pessach Keara according to the Arizal. At that moment the Rebbe did say a special kabbalistic prayer, however not in other occasions.

After this general overview, I would like to focus in the impact of preparatory prayers in the field of Safrut specifically.

Chazal demand an extreme level of focus when writing Mezuza, Tefillin and Torahs (aka Sta”m), and pre-writing prayers and concentration are almost mandatory, not merely advised. The Keset HaSofer (פרק ד), which is the last word in Halacha for Sofrim, writes:

סת״ם צריכין לכתוב אותם בכוונה גדולה לשמה וצריך שיאמר כן בפיו... ואם לא הוציא כן בשפתיו אלא שחשב כן בלבו יש פוסלים אפי׳ בדיעבד.

Sta”m must be written with a high level of concentration - lishma - and (the scribe) must say it verbally... if he didn’t say it with his lips but only thought in his heart there are those who invalidate the scroll even Bedievad.

Hence we can see that unlike other Miztvot, where we can find room for leniency, the lack of focus will invalidate the scribes’ entire work even before he gets started. Imagine a whole Sefer Torah invalidated on this account - a year’s work immediately deemed unfit.

According to accepted Halacha, the pre-writing prayer said when starting a Sefer Torah suffices for the whole scroll, even if the scroll will take many years to be completed. Without this initial sanctification, the validity of the whole scroll is in serious question. Even according to those who oppose preparatory prayers, as we have seen above, there's no Bracha for writing a Sefer Torah and therefore no existing framework for a demonstration of intent. Therefore, even they will agree that a Sofer must say loudly that he intends to perform the Miztva. 

The same principle applies one step before, in the process of manufacturing the parchment for writing. The very first moment of the production requires a verbal declaration that the work is being done lishma - for the sake of the Mitzva. Therefore if the worker fails to make this declaration at the start, the resulting parchment will be invalid and the Keset HaSofer writes ואין להקל i.e. there’s no room for leniency. It's interesting that this is so, as the Miztva per se is the writing of the Sefer Torah while the parchment production is only an Hechsher Mitzva (enabling the Miztva) and I would think that perhaps there's a way out in case of emergency. That's what the Keset says - no room for lenience, period.

The actual wording of this verbal declaration is also crucial. When manufacturing parchment for Mezuza, for instance, the worker will need to specifically say עורות אלו אני מעבד לשם מזוזה - I’m working these hides for the sake of (the Mitzva of) Mezuza. It's important to note that this very declaration is only valid if the parchment will indeed be used for a Mezuza. However, a parchment that will be used for Tefillin, the worker must be specifically declare it for Tefillin - ideally (there's perhaps room for leniency if you declared intention for a Tefillin but used the parchement for a Torah because of the concept of Maalim Bakodesh - one may increase the sanctity once there's a valid declaration).

In practice, the klafim makers usually produce the parchment with a conditional declaration - “I’m working these hides for either a Mezuza, Tefillin or a Torah, to be decided at a later date”. This is called a parchment produced “al tnai”, on a condition, and the Keset writes (פרק ב) that a person can rely on this option בשעת הדחק, as a last resort. But it's better to use a non-conditional parchement for sure.

So which klafim are usually sold in the market today? I learned it the “hard way”. When I purchased klafim for my Sefer Torah, the package got stuck in customs when the seller mailed it to me. I was quite upset because the authorities wanted to charge me a fortune for import taxes. So I called the klafim maker and after a chat, I discovered that these hides were “conditional hides” and he said that he could take them back if I purchased more expensive non-conditional parchments. Yes, there’s a substantial difference in price between the two, and while I assumed I was buying the very best, this whole situation enabled me to exchange my purchase for a much more "mehudar" option.

This is the level of trust involved in the work of a Sofer, because the scribe has to source his material from a trusted source and even a good source can give you less then optimal products. In turn, the private buyer has to trust the Sofer, and the source where the Sofer got his materials from. That's quite a leap of faith.

Therefore a Sofer or any aspiring buyer of Judaica scrolls must be vigilant and - here is the difficult part - know the Halacha. We live today in an age that many think that everything can go as long as you mean well. Unfortunately, in the world of Safrut, this is wishful thinking and there are many things that will go wrong without proper due diligence and knowledge. Hoping for the best will only get you in trouble.

One of these “danger spots” is the pre-Mitzva declaration which we have explored. That’s how important this short prayer is, and the impact it has in a holy scroll.

I will conclude with the recommended pre-writing prayer as mentioned in the Lishchat HaSofer:

1- before writing, the Sofer must recant for his sins.
2- he should recite the Kabbalistic prayer אנא בכח גדולת ימנך תתיר צרורה וכו׳
3- he should recite this personal prayer: יהי רצון מלפניך ה׳ או״א שתשרה שכינתך במעשה ידי ותצליכני בכותבי זאת שאני כותב ספר תורה זה לשם קדושת ספר תורה ותצילני מטעות הכתיבה ומטעות הכוונה אמן כן יהי רצון