A1 Soferim - Good Reports

[hatam_soferet]

I get emails like this on average twice a month:

If you have advice about what I should do with my ancient tefillin, that would be great. They were my great-grandfather’s and I would love to use them, but they are tiny, and the man I talked to at [Big Judaica Store] told me that it was likely the parchment would no longer be kosher and that there

Comments

[kolraashgadol]

Just out of curiousity.... why don't you do tefillin repairs? I'd send mine to you....

[hatam_soferet]

Because
a) you need to be better at it than I am to do it for real
b) issues with protecting the orthodox. I'll post about it sometime.

[crewgrrl]

As I have mentioned before, my current consulting gig* works with HaSofer in Brooklyn. As far as I know, they have no problems with women. However, if you do not want to shlep out to Brooklyn and are reasonably close to Teaneck, you can bring them to Judaica House where no questions are asked. There's just no reason to ask them.

Now, when they are itsy-bitsy, the age question might be asked. As in "how old are these t'fillin? If they are Very Old, you are likely to be told that yes, they need checking but are probably still good. If they are less than 50 years old, it is less than likely that they were ever good.**

*This is what we are calling going into Old Job on a very part time basis and Making What I Deserve as essentially a favor because they are Swamped.

**These answers are the short form and are probably better explained by hatam_soferet" than me.

[wub]

**I am interested in hearing more! I have a set that I bought new and I wonder what the deal is...

[crewgrrl]

So, this is the slightly longer short form. For the very long form, you can ask the lady who knows far more about this than I.

In Olden Days in Eastern Europe, extra leather for t'fillin cases was expensive and not easy to come by. So was parchment. So, by necessity, the t'fillin were much smaller. Because of this, the parchments were Very Carefully Written. Also, those Big Impressive T'fillin that we see nowadays are really only capable of being produced because of nifty modern things like hydraulic presses.

On the other hand, nowadays, the art of making teensy t'fillin isn't really employed in their making. They're made sloppily and are sold quite cheaply. I know that t'fillin seem expensive, but keep in mind that you are getting what you pay for. If you paid less than $200 for Brand New t'fillin, it's unlikely that they're kosher - unless someone you know is doing you an incredible favor. Especially if they're small.