Friday, March 18, 2005

THE PROFESSION OF "SCRIBE" is profiled in the Jerusalem Post:
Written by hand
By BEREL WEIN

One of the most honored professions in Jewish life is being a scribe or sofer.
[...]

The scribe writes the Torah, the parchments inserted into the boxes of teffilin and the parchment inserted within the mezuzot affixed to the doorposts of Jewish homes and premises. Thus, a scribe is usually called a sofer stam - the word stam being the acronym for sefer torah, teffilin and mezuzot.

Scribes are also employed to write gittin - bills of divorce, which must be written individually, by hand, for each particular case. A scribe writes with a quill made from the feather of a fowl and uses ink specially prepared for the task. His work is exacting, time-consuming and painstaking. No mistakes are allowed and in today's technologically advanced world, there are special computer driven programs that check the work of the sofer for accuracy and correctness.

[...]

Lots of interesting information here and worth reading in full.

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