Petuchot and Setumot

This is one of the most hotly debated topics of Safrut and I just want to write a little bit about the basics and how this subject impacts us today. Although this is a longer-than-usual post, I can safely say it's my most important piece so far in this blog, since it has a direct impact in two daily Mitzvot - Mezuza and Tefillin.

The Basics
The Torah is comprised of many parshiot, or "segments", which can be connected to each other in two ways, in a "Setuma" (סתומה) layout or in a "Petuha" (פתוחה) layout. The Rambam and the Rosh discuss what's the exact layout of Setuma and Petuha and in many instances what is a Parsha Stuma for the Rosh is a Petuha for the Rambam.

The two instances where they disagree are the following:

1. According to the Rambam, whenever a Parsha starts in the middle of the line that will be considered a Parsha Setuma. The Rosh will say the opposite - according to him this is the layout of a Parsha Petuha.
2. According to the Rambam, whenever a Parsha starts in the beggining of the line that is the Parsha Petuha. The Rosh says that this is a Parsha Setuma.

The best way to visualize this discussion is by taking a look at the Mezuzot of the Ashkenazim and the Sephardim. As you will see in the next section of this post, the Talmud says that the Mezuzot must have a Setuma layout and the Sephardic Jews write it like the opinion of the Rambam (see pic below). According to the Rosh, this is actually a Parsha Petuha layout !


The Poskim say that the Sofer must try to write the פרשיות in the two layouts in which there's no debate ("universal layouts"), in order to follow both the Rambam and Rosh. There are two universal layouts - one Petuha and one Setuma - and you can identify them in the picture in the right. The "space" at the top is a universal Parsha Petuha while the "space" at the bottom of this picture is a universal Setuma.

Today, all the sofrim don't have to worry about these layout issues since they have the luxury of copying it from spotless computerized Tikkunim, so all Sifrei Torah today have the universal Petuchot and Setumot, which is great. But until recently the sofrim didn't have such great Tikkunim and they occasionally had to use a non-universal layout.

If a Sofer is forced to use a non-universal layout the Rema notes that he should not stray away from the opinion of the Rambam, since he had a very reliable Tikkun in his possession. Most scholars say that this Tikkun is the Aleppo Codex, and I hope I can write a more about this codex in the future.

Impact in the Modern Day Mezuzot

As I introduced in the previous section, the Rambam vs. Rosh discussion has a direct impact in the layout of our מזוזות. The Mezuza has two Parshiot - Shema and Vehaia - and the Talmud says that they must be connected in a Setuma layout. You would think that we again use the "universal" Setuma layout in a Mezuza but that's not the case and that's when this whole subject becomes really interesting. The Sephardim, expectedly, follow the non-universal Setuma of the Rambam and they are "safe", since they have no business with the Rosh's shita. But for the Ashkenazim is really tricky and here is why.

Until some 300 years ago, if one would open an Ashkenazi Mezuza he would see a very odd layout, that would not conform with ANY of the main opinions. Basically, the Parshiot were written without any pause, almost like the two parshiot were in fact one. Although this was a very established Minhag, many Halachic authorities sought to fix the problem and choose an alternative layout. There were two main solutions proposed, one by the Taz (Turei Zahav) and another, more "radical", by the another leading Rabbi (can't remeber the name now..).

The Taz's proposal, which changed the established Minhag just a little and allegedly was good both for the Rosh and Rambam's opinions, was widely accepted by the Ashkenazi Jews and it has emerged to become the standard layout which we use until this very day. You can see the modern day Ashekenazi (left) and Sephardi (right) Mezuzot in the pics below.


There's a third solution, proposed by the Mahari Abuhab, which is very interesting and worth to mention. He proposed the most obvious solution: to use the universal Setuma layout, thus solving all the problems. No one really accepted this solution, and the Shach (יו"ד סימן רפח סק"י) speculates that there is Mesorah that disctates all the words which are line-headers. According to the Mahari Abuhav, the line of the second Parsha will not start with "Vehaia", like the Ashkenazi and Sephardi Mezuzot, but with the word "Mitzva" (see pic below). That might explain why people didn't follow this opinion. Rabbi Moshe Feinstein explores this topic in more depth in יו"ד סימן ק"פ.

I find it strange that the Ashekenazi Jews don't write the Mezuza in the way the Sephardim do, in accordance to the Rambam's shita. After all, the Rema did say that when in doubt the opinion of the Rambam should be followed, and here in Mezuza I would think the same rule applies. I guess the Ashkenazim were hesitant to completely refuse their old Minhag and preferred the Taz's solution, which is a slight amendment to the Mezuza layout they already had.

Impact in Modern Day Tefillin

While the Petuhot/Setumot topic has great revelance to Mezuza, its relevance to Tefillin is even greater. If a Mezuza wasn't written in a proper Setuma way, the Mezuza is still Kosher "bedieved". In Tefilin, it's more problematic - if a Tefillin doesn't have this Setuma layout, the Tefilin are potentially Pasul!

Like in Mezuza, the Sephardim do the Setuma layout like the Rambam, so once again they're safe. Most of the Ashkenazim follow once again the solution of the Taz, but I've heard of many Hassidim who are Makpid in following the Rambam in the Tefilin layout because of the above-mentioned stringency. From my personal research, even tough these groups have Rambam Tefillins, their Mezuzot are written according to the Taz, a rather ironic fact. In my humble opinion both Mezuzot and Tefillin should be written in the same Setuma way - be it like the Rambam or like the Taz - but that is the least of my "problems":

I've heard that some "Briskers" wear two Rashi Tefillin - one according to the Taz and another one according to the Rambam, just to be safe. Now that's really odd. If you would (theoretically) be a Chassidish Brisker you would probably wear two Rashi Tefillins (Rambam +Taz) and two Rabbeinu Tam Tefillins (Rambam+Taz)!

Now I understand better what they say in the name of the Gaon - that we would have to own over 70 pairs of Tefillin if we wanted to be "yotze" all the opinions.

Another Important Discussion

I didn't even mentioned the "Breuer" factor - the recent debate about the Petuchot and Setumot found in the Aleppo Codex, extensively explored by the late Rabbi Breuer. That's a whole different story, and it's difficult to fully understand it before knowing the basics of Setuma and Petuha Parshiot, which you hopefully do know by now. I will get into this in another opportunity. Gitten Tzimmer!

My Progress #3: 11-lined Megillat Ester

After some 2 months I managed to finish my first Megilla, a small 11-lines Megillat Ester. I put a great deal of effort in this project since I'm not planning to write another Meggilat Esther anytime soon - it's way to much work and this is only a hobby for me. So I wrote it slowly, in the best way I could. No one writes an 11-lines Megilla right off the start since the parchment is more expensive, but I figured that I should do it right if I only do it once.

The original goal was to finish by Purim but I decided to take it easy and not run too much, even though I do feel quite stupid to finish it just 3 weeks after Purim... I was intending to bind whatever I had ready on the day before Purim and bring it to Shul - after all, according to Halacha if the Megilla is 51% complete one could technically recite a blessing over it and read it in public (as long as no full chapter is skipped) and I had a good 75% ready, but I was too busy to bind the klafim together on time.

Be as it may, I'm posting pictures of the whole Megila at the end of this post. I would greatly appreciate if anyone finds mistakes, I only went thru it once and it's easy to overlook your own mistakes.

Also, I added a few little decorations like the ones you see in the popular Hamelech Megilot. As I noted in my post about Megilla lines, the 11-lines Megilla is not "Hamelech" (i.e. it doesn't always start with the word Hamelech at the top of the column) but I did take the liberty to decorate the Hamelechs that appeared in the top of the columns. That's the cool thing about writing your own Megilla - you can do (almost) whatever you want!


From left to right: The Palace, The Tree, The Tear, The Justice


From left to right: The Dots, The Flames, The Crown, The Sharbit


From left to right: The Two Kerubim, Another Crown, The Galaxy

And here it's the full Megilla. I couldn't post it in order, so it's all scrambled together...:

Amazing Megillot #4 - Papercut on Red Leather

This is a very special and contemporary Megillat Esther made by a personal frien, Uri Revach.

It's hard to do papercut in a Megilla since the Megilla becomes too delicate and thus hard to handle. Aside from this, the papercut work hardly gets its full value since there's nothing behind it - no contrast.

So this artist came up with a solution - he stuck the Megilla in red leather, enhancing the papercut work and also giving to the Megilla a "royalty" feel. He also made the case, which is made out of wood, silver, gold and ivory. All in all, a true masterpiece.

Price upon request.

The Parchement - Klaf or Gevil?

Torah Scrolls were always written in the "Gvil", the outer part of a fully-grown kosher animal's skin - sheep, goat, deer and so on (see image in the right, credit to the Gewil Institute). That's how Moshe Rabbeinu, the Ran and Rambam wrote their own Sifrei Torah and that was the only parchment used by Jewish scribes throughout the centuries.

As I wrote in my post about the Kulmus, around 700 bce the feather quills started to become immensely popular among scribes in general and, specially in Europe, many sofrim started to favor these quills instead of the "original" reed quills. The parchment was also improved and the European scribes started to write not on the outer, but on the inner part of the animal's skin, because it was more smooth and thus suitable for the delicate feather quills (reed quills are more sturdy and can write in either Gvil or Klaf. Feather quills don't write well in Gvil). This inner part of the animal's skin is called "Klaf" (קלף) and eventually all Ashkenazi scribes switched for this parchment and the feather quill altogether, for both Mezuzas and Torah Scrolls. The Gevil went "out of fashion", so to speak.

The Ashkenazi Rabbis accepted these changes and an all Ashkenazi Torah Scrolls are written in Klaf until this very day.

But the Sephardi world was less influenced by these changes and the Sefardi sofrim kept using reed quills and Gvil parchement, like the original Sifrei Torah. However, as the Sephardi Jews started to leave the Arab world it seems that they were influenced by the Ashkenazi way of writing and many Sefardi scribes today do use feather quills and Klaf, a surprising fact. Virtually all parchments produced in Israel are "Klaf", not "Gvil/גביל".

Last week I luckily found a great Yemenite website which is pushing for the "resurrection" of the Gvil parchment (read "The Gewil Torah Scrolls are Popular once Again" - take it with a grain of salt...). The Yemenite Jews follow the Rambam's customs blindly and as I noted, the Rambam wrote his own Sefer Torah in Gevil, so this campaign really makes sense. But they claim that a Rabbi Mordechai Eliahu, the former Sephardic Chief Rabbi, has a Gvil Sefer Torah, so I guess many Sephardim will like this campaign as well since their older Sifrei Torah are also written in Gvil.

It's easy to differentiate between a Gvil Torah Scroll and a Klaf one. The Gvil scroll is dark in the inside (where the text is written) and lighter in the reverse side; the Klaf scroll is the exact opposite.

Yemenite Gewil Scroll (note the reed quill in the scribe's hand)

Ashkenazi scroll. Note the white klaf color

I was so fascinated by this story that I decided to make a field trip to a klafim factory in Jerusalem. I saw the whole process and the owner explained to me that besides all the Gewil vs. Klaf story there was another interesting development.

Until very recently, all klafim were made out of skin of fully-grown animals. But the Rabbinic authorities always praised the skin of a "Shlil" (שליל), or unborn animal, even tough it was unpractical to write a Sefer Torah from a Shlil - you need dozens of fetuses and that was hard if not impossible to find. But 30 years ago someone in the klafim business heard that the big slaughter houses in the US and Europe had dozens of "shlil" everyday in their factories and they didn't have any use from them. Since then all the klafim factories buy these shlils and make a super-smooth klaf out of it. So our klafim became even better!

The klafim process, as I saw it:
1- Put the skins in chemicals for 4 weeks.
2- Take it out and remove the hairs.
3- Hang it for a few days so it can dry.
4- Stretch it for a few days.
5- Remove the remaining impurities.
6- Cut the Klaf to the desired thickness and size.

Rashi Vs. Rabbeinu Tam - Round 1

One of the classic discussions among the commentators of the Talmud is between Rashi (11th century) and his nephews, known as the Tosafists. There are many famous discussion between them but in this blog we focus in Safrut and there are two classical discussions pertaining to this subject. We will deal with one of them in this post.

Rashi and Tosafos disagree in regards to the exact shape of the letter Chet in the Jewish Alphabet. A very short briefing: The Talmud says that there's a special "tag" (sketch) on top of the letter Chet, which points upwards symbolizing that God, who's up in the heavens, is eternal since the letter Chet is connected to the word "Chai", to be alive. Rashi and Tosafot explain differently the shape of this mystical sketch.

Rashi says that it is a simple sketch in the left side of the Chet like this while Tosafot says that there's a "pyramid" (a.k.a. "the hunch of a camel") in the very middle of the letter like this , essentially two connected Zains (you can see the original page of the Talmud, where this discussion is to be found, here)

That means that the grandsons (Tosafists) had a different Torah Scroll than their grandfather (Rashi), a striking fact. And the Halachic implication of these two versions is not simple - a Sefer Torah that has some Chets like Rashi and some like Tosafot might be pasul, so the rabbis decided to adopt a "blend" of the two versions, which we still use to this very day: (my own hand-writing). The Sephardim have a slightly different version -> .

But this is not the end of the story. A few hundred years later the Ariza"l (16th century), the most revered Kabbalist, introduced a few changes in the letters of the Torah and one of the affected letters is the Chet. Instead of two connected Zains, the Ari wrote the Chet with a Vav and a Zain, like this .

Clearly, the Chet is the most controversial letter of the Hebrew alphabet and now you know why!