Torah scroll. “Here is a scroll of the Pentateuch Exhibition “Brush and Kalam”
Before his death, Moses wrote down thirteen Torah Scrolls in the Holy Language. Twelve of them were distributed among the twelve tribes. The thirteenth (together with the stone Tablets of the Covenant) - placed in the Ark of the Covenant. If anyone tried to change the text of the Torah, the Scroll from the Ark of the Covenant would be evidence against him. And if an attempt were made to falsify the text of the thirteenth Scroll, the remaining twelve copies would immediately reveal any discrepancy. This "control copy" from the Ark of the Covenant was later transferred to the Temple, and all other scrolls continued to be checked against it.
In the synagogue, the Torah Scroll is kept in a special closet (aron ha-Kodesh), on which a beautiful curtain is hung ( "parochet"). The scroll itself is placed in an inlaid case (Sephardic custom) or wrapped in a special vestment (Ashkenazi custom). When taking out the Torah on Saturdays, it is customary to decorate the scroll with a crown. When taking out and bringing in the Torah, everyone stands up.
If the scroll is accidentally dropped on the floor, the whole congregation must fast during the day.
The Commandment to Write Your Own Torah Scroll
Said in the Torah (Devarim 31:19): "And write this song for yourself, and teach it to the children of Israel, put it in their mouth, that this song may be a testimony to me among the children of Israel."
The sages concluded from this: there is a special commandment to write your own Torah Scroll. The fulfillment of this commandment is entrusted to every Jew. When each person has his own Torah Scroll at hand, this will give him the opportunity to constantly study it and teach him to fear Heaven.
You can fulfill this commandment by writing a Torah Scroll yourself or by hiring a scribe, but you cannot buy a ready-made scroll or receive it as an inheritance or as a gift.
There is a custom to write a Torah Scroll in memory of the righteous. Everyone can join the writing of such a Scroll by paying for a letter, a word or a whole passage, thereby expressing their love and respect for the departed righteous, and also receive a share in the commandment.
Census taker - sofer STAM
The process of carefully rewriting the scroll by hand takes about 2000 hours (a whole year of work in normal mode).
Sopher scribe (or soifer) can only be an educated, religious Jew who has received special training and certification. He must have a true awe of the Almighty: after all, in order to correctly write a scroll, you need to know a huge number of laws. Once the text is written, it is impossible to establish whether it is kosher [i.e. whether he is fit.
Writing is necessary for the fulfillment of the commandment, for which the scribe says aloud that he writes this to fulfill the commandment of writing the Torah Scroll, and all the time while the sofer writes, he must keep this intention in mind. The scribe must be in a state of spiritual and physical purity, for this, before starting work, he thoroughly washes and dips in the mikveh.
The scribe has no right to write the Torah from memory. Before him should always be another, kosher scroll, which must be constantly checked.
Each Name of the Creator that occurs in the text must be written with the awareness that this is a holy Name. Before writing it, the sofer says aloud that he is writing the holy Name of the Creator. At the same time, there should be enough ink on the pen to write the entire Name in its entirety.
Kosher Torah Scroll
There are more than twenty requirements for a Torah Scroll, according to the Talmud, and only the scroll that meets all of these requirements is considered kosher. The Shulchan Aruch code of laws gives precise rules for writing each letter and sign; the law also regulates the length of the lines, the length and width of the parchment, the number of lines, the size of the gaps and indents. The text is written without division into verses, without vocalizations and without punctuation marks.
If at least one of the twenty conditions is violated, the Torah Scroll cannot be considered sacred, and the text of the Torah cannot be read from it during public readings.
For writing a Torah scroll (as well as for writing the Scrolls of the Prophets and Scriptures, tefillin and mezuzah) only the skin of kosher animals can be used. In order for the skin of an animal to acquire the status of parchment, it must undergo special processing.
There are two types of parchment: "machine" - mechon claf and "handmade" - claf avodat poison. Although the more modern "machine" parchment is of much higher quality, many sages of our time do not fully accept it, since the level of "initiation" that can be achieved with hand-dressing of the skin is higher than the level that can be achieved using technology.
The ink must be blue-black and made according to the technology obtained by the sages of the Torah.
Feather (culmus), should be beautiful - although this does not affect the text - and made according to certain rules. In the days of the Talmud, they wrote with a reed pen, in our time they write with a bird pen.
After the copy is made, the parchment pages are sewn together with special threads made from the tendons of the legs of kosher animals. Every four pages are stapled together to form a section. The sections are then sewn together into a scroll, the ends of which are attached to round wooden bolsters called "acei haim"(lit. "tree of life"), with handles on both sides; between the handles and the roller itself, wooden disks are put on to support the scroll when it is in an upright position. They read the scroll, rewinding it from the left roller to the right one, without touching it with their hands.
Not a single wrong letter
A Torah scroll is considered unreadable if even one letter is added to the text, if even one letter is missing, or if even one letter is so damaged that it cannot be read.
It is accepted that, having finished writing the Scroll, the sofer submits his work for verification to a professional auditor, who is called in the holy language "mage and a". The magician must check each letter to make sure they are written in strict accordance with the law.
Talmud in treatise Eruvin (13a) reports that Rabbi Ishmael, addressing his student Rabbi Meir, who was a sofer, said: “My son, be very careful in your work, as this is work for the glory of Heaven. And if you miss even one letter, or add even one extra letter, you will destroy the whole world.”
Rashi gives examples of how the addition or omission of a single letter can lead to a heretical reading of the Torah. This, in essence, is the very mistake that can destroy the whole world.
Ekaterina Stepanova's program
"Time of the Hermitage"
Exhibition "Brush and Kalam"
AUDIO + TEXT + PHOTO
One of the temporary exhibitions currently taking place in the Hermitage seems particularly important and interesting to us, because it tells about the history of books and manuscripts. Eastern manuscripts. And most of the Eastern manuscripts deal with the Christian heritage of the Near and Middle East. But that's not the only thing she's interested in. A paper, printed book came to us from more distant eastern countries, and the handwritten culture of Central Asia and the Far East is also presented at the exposition.
“Brush and Kalam” is the name of this exhibition. About the exposition, about the history of book culture, about the cultural context of the epoch and those countries where handwritten masterpieces come from, tells the curator of the exhibition, leading researcher of the Sector of Byzantium and the Middle East of the Department of the East of the State Hermitage, candidate of philological sciences Anton Dmitrievich Pritula:
— The exhibition is dedicated to the 200th anniversary of the Asiatic Museum, which is now called the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts, but the collection is still the same, although it was replenished in subsequent decades. The Institute was founded in the 1920s, and the collection was continuously expanded and replenished. But the idea of this exhibition is not only to show the history of this collection, but mainly to show all the diversity of books in the East, their production, existence, beauty, originality and variety of forms. That is why we decided to show not only manuscripts, but also various objects of material culture and applied art related to the distribution and production of the book.
In particular, we took various kalyamdans from the Hermitage collection, i.e. pencil cases. "Kalam" is a sharpened pen, which was used to write all the manuscripts and documents in the Near and Middle East. We also showed various inkwells to show the production and existence of bookishness as diverse as possible.
It should also be noted that the exhibition is divided into three large sections, each of which represents a large and integral historical and geographical region, of which we have three. The first is the Near and Middle East, the second is Central Asia and India, and the third is the Far East. In each of these regions there was a certain historical and cultural commonality, which was also expressed in the unity of the material, the method of production of the book and its form. In particular, in the Middle East, as I said, books were copied using kalam, i.e. sharpened cane.
The name of the exhibition contains the word "kalam". To be extremely precise, in the Eastern languages [el] is palatalized, i.e. softens, but according to transcription, it is usually written not through “I”, but through “a”. In Arabic and Persian, this "el" is softened, but when it is written in Russian transcription, it is usually written as "kalam". Although all professionals are Arabists, Iranians, etc. - know that this "el" should be pronounced softly. These are features of historical transcription. But in theory it should be pronounced as "kalam", as it is pronounced in the original languages. I understand that it sounds strange, of course, but, nevertheless, it happened that way.
The form of the codex that the modern book has, it also comes from this region. The first and most extensive region in terms of collections is the Near and Middle East. These are codices, mainly rewritten by kalam. By codex, we mean all modern books in common use, with the exception, of course, of virtual e-books. This is a form of book that is one or more bound notebooks bound in hard or soft cover. This form appeared in the first centuries of our era in the Eastern Mediterranean and spread to the Near and Middle East, first on papyrus, then on parchment, then not on paper. This is also a separate complex historical process of book development. It should also be noted that the entire region was dominated by the Middle East, i.e. Abrahamic religions, i.e. the main religious and cultural component was Jewish, Christian and Muslim bookishness. We have here a religious-cultural, technological and stylistic community. Relative, of course.
Scrolls are a form of book that immediately preceded the codex and was common throughout the Near and Middle East before it appeared. The scrolls were rewritten in a large number of columns so that when the scroll was rewound one single column was clearly visible which was currently being read. It must be said that although with the advent of the code, the scope of the scrolls was significantly reduced, but they did not disappear. They just began to be used in certain areas, namely, in the sacred, in the magical. In particular, in Judaism, in Jewish literacy, parchment scrolls have always been used to read the Holy Scriptures in synagogues during worship, and this form of the book is still used there. In other book traditions of the same region, scrolls were often used to write amulets, talismans, i.e. had a magical meaning. This is most likely due to the fact that they were understood as some kind of archaic, traditional form of the book.
We are just standing in front of one of the exhibits - this is a scroll of the Pentateuch. The Torah, the Pentateuch is the text of the Holy Scripture, which was read in the synagogues at the service at the gathering of believers. Moreover, this scroll was copied in Damascus, but presented to the Jewish community in Samarkand. And we see that the case is decorated - the case itself is wooden - decorated on the outside, upholstered with fabric of Central Asian production. Such velvet fabrics can be found in many collections in Central Asia, in particular in the Hermitage. We are well acquainted with dressing gowns made of the same fabric with the same ornaments. And this showcase just demonstrates the diversity of Jewish literature. Here are some more European-looking cases for a Torah scroll. They have the shape of a book - such rectangular boxes. And the eastern type of case is such cylindrical cases. However, both there and there contained a scroll.
It was the books of Scripture that were most often heavily used, and we see the worn parts on the case. Most likely, this is the area that is usually taken by hand. Without this protective case, this manuscript would undoubtedly have been much more shabby.
And for private collections, say, for home, family reading, already the forms of codes were used. Some of them are made of parchment, some are already made of paper. There was no regulation in home manuscripts. People could order and rewrite whatever they wanted. Moreover, a distinctive feature of Jewish literacy is that there were no special scriptoriums in it, i.e. correspondence workshops. They corresponded either at synagogues or at home. This was often a family activity at home. In particular, this manuscript was copied by two brothers. Here you can clearly see that two people participated in it, because two different colors of ink are even clearly visible here. This is the so-called Masoretic Bible; it's a Bible that's already been read out. As we know, the Aramaic script has been used in Jewish literacy since the first centuries of our era, because what we consider to be the Hebrew script is the Aramaic script. The Hebrew script of the earlier has a completely different form. And some ancient manuscripts have been preserved, the so-called. Paleo-Hebrew writing, now, it looks completely different. We see one of the varieties of Aramaic writing. Its peculiarity is such that vowels are most often not written out. And therefore, initially the Bible and, in general, any Sacred Texts were partly fixed graphically, but partly it was assumed that there was a clearly fixed oral tradition of their pronunciation. Because the text does not fix in its entirety the orthoepic norm of Holy Scripture. And therefore, the further the language changed, the more centuries passed, the more ambiguities and discrepancies in pronunciation became. Therefore, in the first centuries of our era, a system of vowels appeared. This is especially true in the first millennium of our era. It must be said that this is not only in the Hebrew language, but also in various Aramaic forms of literacy - in Syriac literacy, and also already in Arabic, when Islam appeared and Arabic writing appeared. This system of vowels gradually develops more and more and becomes more and more detailed.
And here we see that the text was rewritten by one person, in this case it is one of the two brothers, and the second text written by the first was checked, verified, edited - you see, here some words are corrected, crossed out - and supplemented with vowels, i.e. icons. They are noticeably darker here. Those. it's a different hand, different ink. He applied vocalizations, and so on. the text was simultaneously verified and acquired its accuracy and completeness. The whole system of vowels in all Middle Eastern writings that go back to Aramaic, they are superscripts and subscripts.
And it can be noted that the manuscripts presented here have both one and several columns. A single-column book has the more familiar look of a book, while a multi-column book is a more archaic form of a book that goes back to a scroll. There are even statistics on the use of columns in dated manuscripts. In different book traditions, these statistics are different. But in general there was a tendency to reduce the number of columns.
Still, of course, it is very important what the page format of the manuscript is. Rewriting a large manuscript into one column is not very readable. A large format manuscript is easier to read when it has two columns. If the page is very wide, then one column turns out to be very wide, and it is inconvenient to move your eyes along the lines, they turn out to be very long. Say, for the Holy Scriptures, for large-format books, it was more like two or three columns.
In the next showcase we see a surviving bilingual fragment, quite early, it is parchment. This is a Greek text and with a Syriac translation - a list of the fathers of the First Ecumenical Council. The canons themselves of the Ecumenical Councils of the Holy Fathers are, as is well known, originally in Greek, but since far from everyone in the Syriac-speaking Christian communities knew Greek, and Syriac was the main language of the entire Middle Eastern Christian tradition, almost all Greek texts were translated into Syriac.
Syriac literacy dates back to the first centuries of our era. The first dated manuscripts are from the beginning of the 5th century, but this literature is known to have appeared as early as the 4th century. It greatly expanded and flourished during this period. Gradually, the Syriac language is one of the dialects of the Aramaic language, more precisely, the Eastern Aramaic dialect - it becomes the main church and book tradition for all Christians in the Middle East. To the east of the Byzantine Empire, Christianity was known precisely through the Syrian tradition.
Is this the Antioch Church?
- Not really. The fact is that the so-called Church of the East is the Patriarchate of the Church of the East, i.e. This is a Nestorian Church, located on the territory of the Sasanian Empire. This is Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the current southwestern part of Iran. In general, canonical relationships in the Eastern churches is a special problem in the history of the Church, and this is a particularly difficult issue. As a result, we can say that the so-called. The Church of the East, or the Nestorian Church, was mainly located outside of Byzantium and did not take an active part in the cathedrals at all. Because the cathedrals took place on the territory of the Byzantine Empire and were initiated by the Byzantine emperors, and most of the Church of the East was located in Sasanian Iran and even more eastern regions. Therefore, they were cut off from the conditionally called Universal Church, and therefore their own traditions, their own terminology developed there, their own language prevailed. And that is precisely why it is considered - both traditions are Syrian: East Syrian and West Syrian - each of them developed in its own way, in contrast to the Greek tradition. In Central Asia and Mongolia, Christianity spread thanks to the missionary work of the so-called Nestorian Church, the Church of the East, or the East Syriac Church, because this Church never called itself any Nestorian. This is a kind of stamp, a kind of stigma that they were awarded by the so-called Ecumenical Church, or Chalcedonite, the one that received the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon. As well as the Orthodox or Orthodox Church - any of the existing historical Churches calls itself Orthodox, Orthodox, depending on what language it speaks.
Fortunately, there are two parallel galleries in these halls, i.e. we had the opportunity to exhibit two traditions of the Near and Middle East on a religious basis in two parallel galleries. In the first hall, we present Jewish, Jewish religious literacy, which is the beginning of the Middle Eastern book traditions, to the right of it in a narrow gallery we show all Christian denominations and book traditions, which are again associated with the Middle Eastern Jewish, Jewish literacy, and in the parallel gallery, broader, external, we show the development of the Muslim tradition. That. from the Jewish Jewish tradition, two newer traditions depart in parallel - Muslim and Christian.
We have already seen one of them - the Syrian one. Because it is the closest, because it is the Aramaic language and the Aramaic script. Only this is a different Aramaic script. Because the Hebrew language uses the so-called square Aramaic script. And Syriac - Eastern Aramaic dialects - uses the so-called round letter estrangelo. And then different types of writing develop in different Syrian communities. Estrangelo is common to them, it is a fundamental letter common, and then it develops into cursive handwriting for each of the two denominations. This is East Syrian, i.e. Nestorian letter, it is also presented here. And Western Syrian, but, unfortunately, there is a very small handwriting. This is what is called Monophysite or Jacobite, although they themselves do not call themselves any Monophysites. But here you can see it through a magnifying glass. A magnifying glass is attached to the monument in the window. It is also cursive, but the letters have different outlines.
We see the Gospel of John and the Evangeliary. The Evangeliary itself is the Gospel Lectionary. Evangeliaries are of various types. One of them is the full Gospel text, i.e. the full Gospel, in which conceptions are indicated, as a rule, in the margins. Those. passages, passages from the Gospel, for reading at every service according to the church calendar. These types of lectionaries exist in all Churches, and there are many more types. Now, the two types I'm talking about are rather two types of lectionary organization. The second type of organization of the lectionary is when not all of the Four Gospels are presented in it, but these conceptions or readings are arranged in the order of the liturgical calendar year, this is not according to the Gospel as such, but according to the order of the year. And here we see just the book - it, apparently, was slightly burnt, the pages were burnt - it just does not represent a complete sequential Gospel, but it represents a set of conceptions for each calendar day of the year and holidays. This is the second type.
We go to the first gallery. Coptic literature. Before the Islamic conquest, it was the dominant tradition in Byzantine Egypt. The Coptic language is a descendant of the ancient Egyptian, and their writing is a continuation of a later stage in the development of ancient Egyptian writing. When the Arab conquest took place in the 7th century, the Egyptian Christians began to gradually turn into a minority. As a matter of fact, the Copts come from the same Greek "Egypt". And gradually, already during the period of domination of the Muslim dynasties, the Christian Egyptians, in contrast to the Muslim Egyptians, began to be designated by this word.
In the following showcases, we present Armenian manuscripts and objects. In particular, this overlay on the binding. The Armenian and Georgian traditions are characterized by the decoration of the bindings with various metal overlays, as well as with precious stones. This is precisely the design feature of these manuscripts. We see that the Armenian manuscripts have a very specific decor, a large amount of gold and especially beautiful ornamental ornaments of a plant nature, as well as images of animals and various fabulous architectural ensembles. It is in this area that the decor of Armenian manuscripts is very peculiar, it cannot be confused with anything. We also see a scroll here. Scrolls, as a rule, were used in the Armenian tradition as amulets, talismans. Various prayers, spells addressed to various saints, the Mother of God, etc. were written on them. In general, it is very difficult to draw a line between prayers, spells and official or unofficial prayer-religious practice, because most often the same amulets and talismans in both the Armenian and Syrian traditions were copied by both priests and deacons, i.e. people with a spiritual order.
Nearby we see already Georgian bookishness, and also that the bindings sometimes have a solid metal lining. This, by the way, is the famous binding of Queen Tamara of Georgia, which she donated to the Georgian Iberian Monastery on Mount Athos. Because of this, he survived. This is a unique binding of the 12th - early 13th century. Icon frames and bindings are often very similar, and we can see a certain unity of decor. The decor of the Georgian binding is characterized by an even greater use of metal overlays and precious stones. Often they were attached by people who donated some kind of jewelry to monasteries, some of their wealth and their relics. In general, among oriental books, the decoration of bindings with a large amount of metal, etc. less characteristic phenomenon than for Western. Now, if we now go to the parallel Islamic gallery, we will see that this type of decor was not practiced.
We also see here Ethiopian literacy, which is the most distinctive among Christian traditions. Firstly, because it is located in Africa, and secondly, it has always been distinguished by its originality, since it is located on the extreme periphery of the Christian world. Here, too, there is a magic scroll with amulets, talismans and other things. Incidentally, the Ethiopian language also belongs to the Semitic language family, and its script also goes back to the consonantal Semitic script. However, now it has rather the character of a syllabic alphabet. The decor, both of the manuscripts and of the Ethiopian icons, is distinguished by a naive manner, and it too cannot be confused with anything. As well as the method of storing manuscripts - in leather cases that were hung on poles or on carnations to protect them from harmful rodents, insects and other dangerous factors. And it must be said that if in most book traditions paper replaced parchment almost completely by the 13th-14th centuries, then in Ethiopia manuscripts continued to be made from parchment until very recently. And what is even more interesting, the manuscripts are still produced in Ethiopia in large numbers. For example, in most churches and monasteries, the main form of existence of a church book is a manuscript. And this tradition and school of correspondence and decoration of manuscripts is alive and functioning in full. In Ethiopia there is no law on the preservation of cultural heritage, so Western collectors replenish their collections with thousands and thousands of Ethiopian manuscripts, both new and historical, produced several centuries ago during the Middle Ages.
AUDIO 1
Beautifully illuminated, richly decorated or more austere in appearance, manuscripts and books have always been expensive, not available to every home, family, highly valued and carefully preserved. A special attitude was even to those tools with which the manuscripts were created. They can also be seen at the temporary exhibition "Brush and Kalam". These instruments are from the Hermitage collection. But the manuscripts themselves, presented on the exposition of the third floor of the Winter Palace, are unique monuments of one of the largest collections of oriental manuscripts in the world - the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Further, Anton Dmitrievich Pritula introduced us to the Islamic book tradition, as well as to the peculiarities of the culture of Central Asia and the Far East. We also learned how all these diverse cultures influenced each other and how they were ultimately reflected in the appearance of the modern book in the form to which we are accustomed, and printing technologies.
AUDIO 2
Petersburg is traditionally a multi-confessional city. And if such architectural monuments as the Cathedral Mosque on Kamennoostrovsky Prospekt or the Buddhist temple on Primorsky Prospekt are undoubtedly included in the city's cultural environment, then the Brush and Kalam exhibition opens up the opportunity for the general public to get acquainted with the ancient book tradition of the peoples for whom these temples were built and which are also woven into the cultural context of our city.
The exhibition will run until March 31, 2019. Finding it is quite simple. If, upon entering the Winter Palace from the main entrance, go not to the right, in the direction of the Jordan Stairs, but to the left, past the School Wardrobe (there is also an entrance control), reach the Church Stairs and climb it to the third floor, then we immediately and halls of this exposition are opened. It is only better to start the inspection from the very beginning, going forward several halls, and then gradually returning back to the Church stairs.
Virtually unrolled scroll from Ein Gedi
For the first time, American and Israeli scientists have read the full text of a charred scroll without physically unrolling it. A scroll containing one of the oldest texts of the Pentateuch was found in the oasis of Ein Gedi in Israel. According to scientists, the age of the scroll is 1500-1900 years. Research published in Science Advance.
The charred scroll that researchers were able to read was found in 1970 at the Ein Gedi oasis. According to various estimates, the text on the leather scroll was written either in the 1st-2nd or 3rd-4th centuries AD. In Ein Gedi, starting from about the 7th century BC, a large Jewish community lived. In the VI century AD, the settlement was destroyed by nomadic Arab tribes. During archaeological excavations, researchers found a synagogue ark (where the texts of the Torah, sacred to the Jews, were kept) and fragments of a charred scroll in it, which continued to fall apart whenever they were touched. Thus, scientists could not unroll the charred lumps for fear that they would irrevocably collapse.
Charred scroll from Ein Gedi
S. Halevi / Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library, IAA
A few years ago, the authors of the current work decided to conduct a non-invasive study of the scroll from Ein Gedi. They scanned it using X-ray tomography and obtained a three-dimensional model of the artifact. Then, using the software they developed, they began to virtually "unroll" the scroll to reconstruct a two-dimensional image with text written on it.
Last year, researchers were able to read the first eight lines of text. In the new work, they deciphered the entire scroll. In total, it contained 35 lines, setting out the first two chapters from the Book of Leviticus - 18 lines of text have been preserved, the remaining 17 scientists have been able to reconstruct. According to researchers, this is the oldest copy of the Pentateuch found in the synagogue ark.
Transcription and translation of the restored text. Lines 5-7.
W.Seales et al. / Science Advances, 2016
(1) The history of the relation to the Torah scroll is the history of one sublimation, the sublimation of the Temple and the kingdom, the house of God and the body of the king. After the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem - the place where Shekhinah, the divine presence, lived - the center of holiness in the Jewish community became Sefer Torah, and at her expense, sacredness acquired the place where it is kept - the synagogue. At the same time, the kingdom in Judea was abolished, and the Torah scroll underwent gradual anthropomorphization and exaltation: they began to elegantly dress it, crown it and worship it - as the earthly vicar of the King of Heaven.
(2) Over time, a code of conduct was developed in relation to the Torah, in some ways comparable to court etiquette: stand when the scroll is taken out, do not touch it with bare hands (therefore, a special pointer was invented to read the scroll), correct the wrong reader. When the scroll falls into disrepair, it is buried among the graves of the sages. If the scroll falls to the ground, a daily fast is imposed on the community, so everyone tries to prevent this. So, one worthy parishioner broke his little finger, substituting it under a falling scroll, but saved the community from mournful abstinence.
(3) Much more serious mourning is observed if the scroll - the main property of the community - has burned down or been defiled. In the medieval Jewish chronicles of the pogroms at the beginning of the First Crusade, the desecration of the Torah scrolls is described with more attention than the killing of people, but in a similar way: their meilim(“mantles”, cloth covers) are removed or torn (that is, the scrolls are undressed), the scrolls are thrown on the dirty ground and burned (that is, they are killed):
... And they took a Torah scroll, trampled it into the dirt, tore it and burned it.... They took all the meilim and the silver that adorned the coils of the Torah scrolls, and threw the scrolls on the ground, and tore them, and trampled them under their feet.
…They took the holy Torah, trampled it into the mud in the street, tore it up and desecrated it to laughter and ridicule.
On the one hand, this is an example of the anthropomorphization of the Torah scroll, on the other hand, an example of its identification with the sacred space. The Torah is described through quotes about Jerusalem, the Temple, or the Ark of the Covenant:
Alas, Holy Torah, the perfection of beauty, the joy of our eyes...
Compare: “Is this the city [Jerusalem], which was called the perfection of beauty, the joy of the whole earth?” (Lamentations 2:15)
Now they tore it up and burned it and trampled on it - those evil villains, of whom it is said: Robbers entered and defiled it.
Compare: “And they will defile My secret [the Ark of the Covenant]; And robbers will come there and defile it” (Ezekiel 7:22)
(4) In the first centuries of our era, the appearance Sefer Torah changed - they stopped writing it on papyrus and switched to parchment. Due to the fragility of papyrus, it was impossible to make long scrolls, so large books were divided into parts (and this division in the canon has survived to this day: the 1st and 2nd Books of Samuel, the Books of Kings or the Books of Chronicles). Parchment, on the other hand, made it possible to make a codex or a scroll from several biblical books at once (for example, Humash- Pentateuch of Moses).
(5) Parchment was made only from the skin of kosher animals, written on the meat side, the sheets were fastened with veins. The completely natural material and the long, extremely painstaking and highly skilled work of the scribe added up to a very high cost of the product. A scroll is a very expensive thing, unbearable for an ordinary individual or family, and, as a rule, ordered by the community for their synagogue; now the average Torah scroll costs several tens of thousands of dollars. For private use, codices were produced - more accessible than a scroll, but also not cheap, as, indeed, were all books in the preprint era. The Cairo genizah has preserved for us a lovely story about a woman, a sales agent, who undertook to implement two codes of the Torah, inherited by her client. She searched for a buyer for a long time, but without success, and finally decided to sell the codes to her own son for 7 dinars, of which she took a third of the dinars as a commission; a few years later, her client found out that the price of one such code was 20 dinars, and filed a lawsuit against the unlucky agent.
(6) In relation to the codes of the Torah, as well as other sifrey kodesh, sacred books and books of sages, the Jewish tradition has developed certain etiquette norms. For example, in medieval Europe, when buying (or, more precisely, when trying to buy) this or that codex, it was forbidden to say: “This book is not worth that much”, but only: “I don’t have that kind of money.”
(7) The most important aspect of manufacturing and storage Sefer Torah became her decoration - within the framework of the concept of "decoration of the commandment." The idea of decorating what is commanded by the Almighty is derived from a number of biblical quotations, most notably the following verse from the Song of Miriam: “He is my God, and I will glorify Him [I will adorn Him; I will prepare a habitation for Him]; the God of my father, and I will exalt Him” (Ex 15:2).
(8) Decoration starts with graphics. The Torah scroll is written by a special calligrapher who rewrites sacred texts for Sefer Torah, tefillin and mezuzah, Sofer STAM. In his profession, there are a lot of rules, both technical and etiquette. He washes his hands before starting to work on the scroll, and before each writing of the name of God. In one column of text, it should not allow more than three corrections. He writes only on one side of the parchment and only in ink of organic origin. She lines the parchment with a stylus (previously, threads were pulled for this), and the letters are located under the rulers, and not above them.
(9) On the margins of a scroll or codex of the Torah, micrography can live - one of the types of decoration of the text. At first, the Masoretic commentary was recorded with micrography, then it began to serve decorative purposes, forming a geometric, floral or animal ornament.
(10) The poetic fragments in the manuscripts of the Bible graphically differ from the prose text: if the "negative" poetry, containing all sorts of curses and threats against the people of Israel, is written in simple columns, then the "positive" poetry (Song of Miriam and other hymns) - with large gaps , in the so-called "brick wall" format.
(11) The Torah scroll is written in Aramaic script, and the letters are also not easy. Some letters are stretched out of graphic (fill in the gap on the line) or semantic considerations. For example, in Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad(“Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one”) draw Dalet in echoD so no one gets confused Dalet With resh and, God forbid, I would not have read aher, "stranger".
(12) Some letters are decorated with rims or crowns ( taginim) - three or one. It is believed that this tradition came from Moses, and was transferred to him at Sinai by the Almighty himself. The Talmudic Midrash says:
When Moses ascended to heaven, the following vision was revealed to him: the Most High sits on the throne and decorates the letters of the Torah with rims.“Lord,” asks Moses, “what are these whisks for?
The Almighty answers:
“After many generations, a man named Akiva ben Yosef should be born, and he is destined to extract a lot of law interpretations from each line of these rims.
Moses asks:
- Lord, let me see this man.
“Look,” says the Lord.
Moses sees: a teacher - and in front of him are rows of students. Moses took a place at the end of the eighth row, listens and wonders, what kind of law [not written in the Torah] are they talking about? But then he hears: in response to the question of the students, “Rabbi, on what do you base this interpretation?” Rabbi Akiva says:
- It follows from the principles established by Moses at Sinai.
(13) The letters of the holy language are not crowned by chance - they have always been given a special sacred meaning. According to the Ashkenazi custom established in the Middle Ages, Jewish boys who began to study just on Shavuot, during the school initiation ceremony, ate an egg and cookies, on which the letters of the Hebrew alphabet and entire verses from the Torah were applied, or licked honey from the tablet with the alphabet. This custom, however, was condemned by the German Pietist sect. Hasidic Ashkenazi, indicating that in this case defecation becomes blasphemy, and some tosafists, who preferred something more rational, and also saw here a suspicious parallel with communion with the body of Christ.
(14) Having finished writing the text, proceed to the design of the scroll. From the Talmudic and medieval periods, integral scrolls and their frames have not been preserved - only their images. Judging by them, at first there were just scrolls - twisted parchment, later a dot in a circle appears on the images - a coil appears inside the scroll ( amud or etz chaim, "tree of life"). In small scrolls (for example, in the Scroll of Esther) - one coil, in large ones (Chumash) - two.
(15) Coils are crowned with knobs - rimonim: at first they were made in the form of pomegranate fruits, and in Iraq and Iran - apples ( tapuhim), and then - in any form. Usually rimonim are made of silver and are often equipped with bells, which are reminiscent of the clothes of the high priest (after all, Sefer Torah inherits the holiness of the Temple), and also urge all worshipers to pay attention to the removal of the scroll and honor it with silence and rising.
(16) Rimonim alternate with Keter Torah- "the crown of the Torah." Rimonim put on a scroll on Saturdays, and keter- on holidays.
According to Pirkei Avot, there are three crowns in Judaism: the crown of the kingdom, the crown of the high priesthood and the crown of the Torah. Now (this is the last almost two thousand years) the only existing crown is the crown of the Torah.
(17) Jewish ritual art knows two ways of dressing a scroll: tik lsefer torah and Meil Le Sefer Torah. Teak- hard case, box, cabinet made of wood with forged elements, metal, bone with metal inlays. Tikim common in eastern communities: Iraq, Iran, North Africa, Syria, Yemen, India. Teak they put it on the table, open it, but do not take out the scroll and read it vertically.
(18) In Ashkenazi communities (in Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Russia), the Torah scroll is packed in a cloth case, which is also a mantle or dress, - meil, in Yiddish - mantle. Mantle decorated with fringe and embroidery with gold and silver threads: a floral ornament, columns of the Temple entwined with grapes, tablets of the Covenant, lions - a symbol of the tribe of Yehuda, and, of course, the crown of the Torah. For reading, the scroll is taken out of the meil and placed horizontally on the table.
(19) Another Ashkenazi element of the vestment of the scroll - vimpel, a belt for a Torah scroll that prevents it from unwinding involuntarily. wimpel made from a diaper used in a baby circumcision ceremony. Already after the circumcision, the mother or sister embroidered the diaper (usually with silk on cotton, in rich families - silk on silk), and the boy himself brought it to the synagogue for his bar mitzvah. The legend offers the following justification for this practice: on Magaral's brite, they forgot the diaper and took the belt from the Torah, and then they began to do the opposite. Teak he himself did not allow the scroll to unfold, so in the Eastern communities there was no practice of girdling, and in the Sephardic communities there were their own "sashes" for the Torah - avnetim.
(20) The Ashkenazis came up with the idea of hanging on a scroll, on top of mail, tas- a shield for the Torah, reminding us - another temple allusion - of the shield that the high priest wore on his chest. Tas- this is a metal bar on a chain, and in it - a window, or a gate, where a plate is inserted indicating the chapter on which this scroll is unwound - so that you can quickly choose from aron ha kodesh, a synagogue locker with scrolls, the desired scroll (for Shabbat, Shavuot, etc.). In Poland and Russia tas degraded into a purely decorative element - the window stopped opening.
(21) Another functional decoration of the scroll, hanging from a spool on a chain, is a reading pointer designed to avoid touching the scroll with a finger, - poison("hand").
(22) In some communities (for example, in Italy and Algeria) both types of decoration coexisted Sefer Torah. The issue with Spain remains open. In the Sephardic diaspora (in Morocco, the Ottoman Empire, Amsterdam) sewed meilim, and much more luxurious than Ashkenazi mantles, - velvet, with heavy gold embroidery, with a slit on the side, reminiscent of human clothing - a robe or cloak, sometimes even two-piece: the main dress and the cape. In the Sephardic communities in the Balkans, they were called vestido("clothes", "dress"). In Spain itself, judging by the illuminated manuscripts, coexisted tikim and meilim. There is even a folklore explanation of the once occurring transition from the first form to the second - the legend of the Saragossa Purim, preserved in the memory of the descendants of the Zaragoza Jews - families with the surname Saragossi or Saragosti in Greece, Turkey, Albania and Israel.
When the king of Aragon came to Zaragoza for the annual fair, the Jews always brought him tikim with Torah scrolls. But one day they thought it was sacrilege to take out the Torah in front of an earthly king, and they began to take out empty tikim. This trick was given out by a court cross, who wanted to harm his former co-religionists and earn the special favor of the monarch. The king decided to check if this was true, and if it was true, the Zaragoza community was in for a severe punishment for insulting the royal majesty. But on the night before the solemn ceremony, the prophet Elijah appeared to the synagogue servant and ordered the scrolls to be returned to tikim and don't say a word about it to anyone. At the fair, the king expressed a desire to look into the beautiful boxes, the elders of the community almost fainted from horror, but the test revealed their innocence and shamed the traitor-convert, whom the just king ordered to be executed. However, since then, so that there could be no deception, the Sephardim began to use meilim.
In general, "fear God, honor the king", and most importantly, take care of your Torah. Chag Shavuot Sameach!