Rabbi Reuvain Mendlowitz clarifies his position on Ksav Chabad (and my final thoughts)
Last week I posted some thoughts in response to a public lecture given by Rabbi Reuvain Mendlowitz regarding Ksav Chabad (the Alter Rebbe's ksav). I felt he did not represent the issue fairly, and since I had received questions about it from a number of people I felt it made sense to write a general response. After I posted my response on this forum, Rabbi Mendlowitz reached out to me by email and we ended up having a respectful and productive email exchange regarding the relevant issues surrounding Ksav Chabad. His position is a lot clearer to me now, and I think he also took certain things on board that I clarified with him. The purpose of the Stam Forum (at least back in it's heyday before all the whats app groups took over) was to connect sofrim from around the world, to promote achdus and build bridges, as well as to offer support and advice. In that spirit, I felt I should write a follow up post, to clarify some of the issues and misconception...
Most likely it is just a byproduct of the haschola being done in a public ceremony. They honored a few important people to write the letters of Bereishis. Or they may have had a local sofer write the letters publicly and then had the rest of the sefer written by a different sofer. It doesn't look like it was done beshita because the beis is even bigger than the other letters.
ReplyDeleteBut perhaps I am wrong?
No this isn't a by product. This is most likely deliberate as there is a m'kor for this which is Masechet Sofrim 9:1 which says the bet should have four taggin and the letters of the WORD should be extended than all the other letters. This was an original tradition - I have seen this in a couple of other sifrey, one from Morocco. http://www.sofer.co.uk/html/large_letters.html has a picture.
ReplyDeleteThis fell out of use and is now just a large bet.
At the suggestion of my safrus rebbi in New York, I'm going to write the seller and try to get an appointment to look at it. We've been discussing it and expect some interesting variations.
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