Nicholas Bodley wrote:

>On Wed, 13 Apr 2005 12:22:26 -0400, Mark E. Shoulson <mark@...> wrote:
>
>
>
>>I'll have to look this up and get the details right, but this reminds me
>>of a distinction made in the Talmud regarding writing Torah, Mezuzah,
>>and phylactery scrolls. They speak of three kinds of parchment: g'vil,
>>klaf, and duchsutus (I think). One is unsplit, one is split and is the
>>thick (flesh?) side, and one is split and is the other side. And they
>>discuss which can be used to write which article, and on which side each
>>flavor of hide is to be written, etc etc...
>>
>>
>
>A while back, I read a description of the correct way of writing new
>Torahs (Torah, iirc). The instructions about shaping all writing strokes
>were extremely detailed and specific.
>
>

Yes, indeed. There is an excruciatingly detailed treatise called
Mishnat Soferim, I believe written in the early 20th century (I *think*
by the Chofetz Chayim, author of the Mishnah Berurah (or else it was
just based on his work). I have someplace photocopies of an English
translation of the work, if anyone is interested, and years ago before I
knew of one, I started translating it myself and sent descriptions of
two or three letters to a few writing-system-interested friends.

Oooh, here's a decent-looking link:
http://www.torahscribe.com/letters.htm and www.torahscribe.com in
general. Might be good reading for some of you.

Writing the letters in a Torah scroll is very serious business in
Judaism. They must be *just* *so* or the scroll is invalidated, and
being able to distinguish invalidating mistakes is similarly important.

There are three main traditions in writing the letters of Torah scrolls
(and mezuzah-scrolls, and tefillin [phylactery]-scrolls). There is the
Ashkenazi tradition, the Sephardi tradition, and the "nusach ha-Ari"
tradition, of Chasidic provenance. This last is very similar to
Ashkenazic writing, except that a few letters are formed ever so
slightly differently (but you can tell if you know where to look). The
Sephardic letters look much closer to modern printed Hebrew, in part
because they had a large influence on it. The picture on the site
linked above is the Ashkenazic style. See also
http://www.safrus.com/alephbet.html and the rest of safrus.com. This
later link shows the forms for ha-Ari-style letters as well as Ashkenazic.

~mark