As someone who has encountered many scrolls

From MST Newsletter Winter 2018

with special letters and decorative
embellishments (such as found in Sefer Tagin),
some of which are generally accepted but many
not.2 I refer to these oddities as visual midrash
as they tell a story with a meaning beyond the
plain text - if you know what to looks for. I'm
very keen to ensure that these variant traditions
are preserved. However many very 'strict'
scribes will sadly 'correct' them.

The Newcastle Czech scroll doesn't follow

SCROLLS TO NEWCASTLE1
Mordechai Pinchas (Marc Michaels)
Sofer STa"M
www.sofer.co.uk
There's a phrase about doing something
superfluous or unnecessary - 'carrying coals to
Newcastle'. However this diary is concerned
with something that was totally necessary -
repairing a Czech scroll that is on loan to a
synagogue in Newcastle. Well, it is necessary if
the Torah is to be read in the synagogue
service as it has to be kasher (valid).
The story behind the Czech scrolls is very
special indeed and I've had a long relationship
with the Czech Memorial Scrolls Trust. I'm
one of the few scribes authorised to work on
these very special scrolls and indeed helped
them compile the rules for scribes who do
work on them. One rule (number 3) in
particular is very important in respect of this
diary and I quote it below, as a scribe must:
Sefer Tagin, except for three separate
occasions, one in the Shema and two right at
the end. However it does have a few sections
where is has some odd embellishments on the
letters.
I was aware of these before I got to work on
restoring the scroll, as my teacher's teacher Dr.
Eric Ray z"l had encountered and written
about this scroll previously, which he had
shared with me. So when I finally checked
through the scroll to prepare a restoration
report, I got to see them in real life. It is always
very special when I get to work on a scroll that
Eric or my teacher Vivian Solomon z"l had
examined or worked on previously as it
provides a great sense of continuity.
Below: Excerpt from Dr. Eric Ray's special
handwritten notes and drawings of the lettering and
their embellishments © Eric Ray. Towards the end
of the article you can see photos of the actual text
from the Torah to compare.

3. Recognise the integrity of the

scroll is paramount, will neither
add, change or remove signs,
embellishments or any visual style
(based on midrash or not), to or
from the scroll. Every effort will
be used to maintain the integrity
of the scroll, keeping the same
writing style, ink colour and
thickness, stitching etc. Also they
accept the purity of the ancient
script which at times may seem
to conflict with the current
halachic standard of scribing, as
many of these scrolls were
written prior to the strictness of
halachah today.

1
This article is an adaptation and extension of a
diary (blog) entry I posted on my scribal website on 2 See my website for details of these scribal oddities -

26/8/18. See http://www.sofer.co.uk/diary-46 http://www.sofer.co.uk/oddities


Above: the certificate displayed at Newcastle
concerning Czech scroll no. 831. Photo ©
Mordechai Pinchas.
The scroll itself is recorded to be from
Pardubice (Pardubitz)3 and was apparently
written in 1900, though given the loop
stitching would more likely be 1800s, when
that started to fall out of fashion. There are also
some photos of the main synagogue that this
Torah may have rested in and also the area on
the website page of judaica.cz.4
It is indeed very special in that it is 60 lines
long and is not vavey ha-amudim5 as Eric
describes and the columns are very very wide -
3 For more about Pardubice see the page on the Beit
Hatfutsot site -
https://dbs.bh.org.il/place/pardubice-73615
4 http://judaica.cz/?page_id=7981
5 'This is an allusion to the description of the hooks
(vav means hook) of the hangings that were all
around the Mishkan (Tabernacle) in the desert. It
reads, 'and its columns were twenty [in number] and
its bases twenty, the hooks of the columns were brass
and its connectors were silver' (Sh’mot 27:10). Thus
all but five amudim in a Torah begin with a vav.
Scribes are warned against this as they might
lengthen or shorten letters and Maimonides refers to
scribes who do this as ignoramuses. However
nowadays this is exactly what is done and the Bar’chi
Yosef and Zohar say that there is a great secret in
this. This is another example of how the rules can
change from one extreme to the other over time as
accepted practice shapes the laws and not the other
way round. D’varim Shebichtav (p.137) explains that
this is now acceptable because it has been worked
out how to do it without over-extending
or shortening letters and there are good tikkunim to
follow.' (Excerpt from Megillat B'ney Chasmonay
(The Scroll of the Hasmonean Sons), M. Michaels,
Kulmus Publishing, 2013, p.52).
such that there is some 2.5 - 3 regular amudim
(columns) worth of text from today's standard
tikkun (copyists guide) in a single column. This
means that it takes a lot longer to fix a column,
but you do get further along in the 'story' when
you do!
The scroll itself required extensive repair as the
thin strokes on the letters had faded a great deal
and some had vanished completely. This was
particularly noticeable on the tails of the letters
yud and also the think stroke of the mem.
Having spent some considerable time repairing
the scroll, I re-encountered the sections
involving the special decoration as I was
wondering whether they would need
reinforcement or whether I should just leave
them be - as technically they aren't part of the
letters forms.
As it happens it turns out that the extra
decorations do not appear to be written in d'yo
(ink) at all, but seem to be pencil. The normal
tagin had faded to a 'browney-grey' colour but
these were grey and a very different texture as
you can see from the images. Now, it is
important to note that it would therefore be
very easy to remove these extra marks as there
is no specific tradition that the scribe (or
perhaps another later scribe) who added them
was relying on. This is unique and has no
support in any sources. But - and this is why
Rule 3 is there and so important - such an act
would destroy the history of this particular
scroll. It is hard enough to ensure that the
integrity of the scroll is preserved when one is
repairing the actual letters (similar to when I
was repairing the Tyburn Megillah owned by
the nuns of the Tyburn convent from the
1700s and the Alexander Torah, a scroll
rescued from Nazi Germany that was written
in 1790).6
This is because, conservation, restoration and
making something kasher are very different
things and each involves more intervention
with the manuscript. As I explain in my book
6You can read all about the Torah in my book, The
Torah in the Wardrobe, M. Michaels, Kulmus
Publishing, 2017. Escaping the flames of
Kristalnacht, this special Torah, full of rare scribal
practices, has been rescued one more. The book
chronicles both its travels from Thälmassing to
Belsize Square and its careful restoration. Jam-
packed with photos of its history, restoration and its
rare special decorated letters in the tradition of Sefer
Tagin. It is available in paperback
(http://bit.ly/2DAhDQd) and PDF
(http://bit.ly/2qFUyZZ) . There are also videos
available at http://www.sofer.co.uk/repairs
'Restoring the Tyburn Megillah', 'there is a
very real tension between conservation,
restoration and halachah. These are things that
do not always align'.7 This is because
'conservation is very much about preserving
what is already there and preventing further
decay. Conservators would not add ink to a
manuscript and everything would be geared to
doing the absolute minimum to ensure the life
of the artifact was preserved and extended'.8 On
the other hand 'restoration ... is like retouching
a painting or re-gilding some architecture. In
that case one is trying to get back (as far as
possible) to the original work ideally using the
same materials [and techniques] that would
have been used at the time the manuscript was
written'.

Making something kasher can fall into both

camps, but could go beyond that if something
that was kasher back then is not considered
such nowadays in which case should that level
of interference be allowed to an historical
document? Is it tantamount to re-writing the
past - literally. Worst still I have seen some
scribes thrown restoration and conservation to
the wind and correct a Sefardi manuscript with
Ashkenazi k'tav (script). It is technically kasher,
but the integrity of the document is damaged.

In my view, all scribes should be very careful to

respect the tradition of past scribes, even if
things have moved on in the halachah. It is true
(and possibly sad) that scribal practice has
become much more strict and leniencies and
traditions of the past have fallen by the wayside,
but in their time and place they were perfectly
fine and kasher. Indeed these particular
embellishments, being thin, have no impact on
the letters forms and do not interfere with the
validity of the scroll.

Right top: Some photos of the special

embellishments from the Newcastle Czech Scroll.
Photo © Mordechai Pinchas.

Right below: The plaque on the Ets Chayim that

identities the scroll. This one appears to have been
glued rather than nailed on. Photo © Mordechai
Pinchas.

7 Restoring the Tyburn Megillah, M. Michaels,

Kulmus Publishing, 2013, p.20. A truly interfaith
endeavour chronicling the restoration of a several
hundred year old manuscript of the book of Esther
belonging to the nuns of the Tyburn Convent near
Hyde Park. Available in paperback
(http://bit.ly/2D3txSJ) or PDF
(http://bit.ly/2qEeMmM). You can also read more
about it on my site at
http://www.sofer.co.uk/diary-45
8 Op. cit., p.21.
Perhaps the scribe who made the decorations
intended to ink them in but in the event
because of the disaster that befell his
community, never completed that task.
Mordechai Pinchas (Marc Michaels)
Sofer STa"M
www.sofer.co.uk