A story and a thought

Everyone in the sefer Torah industry knows about the machlokes in Parshas Ki Tzetzei on how to spell the word "dakkah" from the words "pitzuei dakkah". I am forever fixing this (both ways) for customers.

Today, the general minhag is to spell it with a hay, with the exception of Chabad and Temanim, who have the custom to spell it with an Aleph.

There is a lot of material on this machlokes including the well known Chabad argument that in the Maharam M'Rottenberg's sefer, it's spelled with an Aleph.

Putting reasoning aside, I want to relate a story that happened to me once.

There is an old, dying Anglo Saxon shul that has about 3 or 4 old sifrei torah. This shul employed a part time Chabad rabbi some years ago. The rabbi came to see me after reading Ki Tzeitze one year and asked me to change the "Dakkos" from hey to alef, which I did. A few years later, the Chabad rabbi moved on and the shul employed a part time Yeshivish rabbi as his replacement. The new rabbi came to see me after laining ki Tzeitzei becase he, in turn,  did not want the alef, he wanted them spelled with the hay.

I obliged and changed the seforim back to the original hay. However in one of the seforim the klaf was so thin because I had already done a mechikah on the spot before, that I made a hole and ruined the sefer. I had to fix it with a matlis, which was a shame because the sefer was otherwise in very good condition.

A shame also because at the end of the day no one in that shul cared or new the difference, except for the rabbi. I'd be surprised if anyone in the shul knew how to read the word dakkah, let alone how to spell it. Most of the remaining Jews in that shul are married out, the fact that they are hearing kriyas hatorah is itself a chiddush.

So was it really necessary for either of these rabbi's to be such akshanim and kanoim to go out of their way and change it? I'm sure if they would have consulted a higher authority the Chabad rabbi would have been told that if it was good enough for the shul until now, he should just leave it. And if the Yeshivish rabbi would have asked a reasonable rov, I'm sure he would have been told that if the Aleph was good enough for the Mharam M'Rottenberg, then its good enough for these secular Jews.

I  marvel on how appropriate it is that the only major machlokes on the spelling of a letter in the sefer Torah, appears in the parsha beginning with the words Ki Tzetzei L'milchama. Because sadly, this argument is a source of disunity and potential sinas achim, and just an example of  of far greater arguments and sinas achim that occur between different groups of yidden in the Torah world.

And when there is disunity between yidden, our common bond, Torah, its advancement and its teachings, becomes the ultimate casualty. And while I mean this figuratively, in this story, it happened in actuality (with the sefer Torah getting ruined).

Just something to think about....