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Regard, if you will, this photograph of a Torah scroll.


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This week’s parasha describes the worship-tent that God commands the Israelites to construct in the wilderness.

Around the tent, they are to construct a courtyard, of panels held between columns.

Perhaps you’ve seen a Torah scroll being unrolled around a sanctuary at Simchat Torah. You’ve seen how it’s long enough to go around the whole room, the ( Read more... )

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You could be taking my class at Yeshivat Hadar!

Or one of the half-dozen other Tuesday night classes which will also be happening. Here’s what mine is going to look like:

Apprentice with a Sofer

Learn basic Torah repair and maintenance skills which will enable you to keep your community’s Torah scrolls in good working order. We will learn halakha ( Read more... )

So how was your Shavuot? I spent it in Washington Heights, davening at Breuer’s.

Breuer’s looks like this on Shavuot:


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I can’t remember which of you asked me about the word יששכר last week, but MarGavriel just sent me a translation of part of S. S. Boyarski’s work Ammudei Shesh and it had a tangent about יששכר in it, so here goes.

The question was “What’s the deal with there being two letter shins in יששכר but our only pronouncing one of them?” That is, why’s it ( Read more... )

Although scrolls of the Pentateuch have been common among almost all groups of Jews throughout the millennia, scrolls of the rest of the Tanakh have been much more rare.

One colorful individual in the story of Tanakh scrolls was a character in the Old Yishuv of Jerusalem, in the 19th century.

He insisted on returning to the original forms of ( Read more... )

טז) לא יעשה חציו גויל וחציו קלפים, אבל עושה חציו גויל וחציו צבאים, אף על פי שאינו מן המובחר. He shouldn’t do half of it on gevil [=a thicker type of cow parchment, more like leather] and half on klaf [a thinner type of parchment made by splitting a cow skin laterally]. But he may do half on gevil and half on deer [deer also comes out thickish ( Read more... )