Global Safrus

Had an interesting case this week. An American Yeshivah bochur learning in Melbourne brought me his tefillin to check. I saw that the yudim looked a little dubious - lacking a guf. In some cases it was worse than others - see pic below.


I told him that many of the yudin (without guf) are problematic. Then he told me that he had it checked last year, in Canada, by a sofer who told him the same thing. As it turns out the sofer in Canada is a member of this forum. So I gave the customer the deatails of the sofer to find out what he paskened.

It turned out the sofer asked a few poskim in Israel and came to the conclusion that the yudim were kosher. I felt that it may be a worthwhile exercise to fix the yudin, at least the worst ones, since based on the psak the Canadian sofer received, there would not be a shaila of lo kesidran - so why not try and improve the situation.

So now my questions are:

This guy is a very serious bochur and wants his tefillin to be betachlis hahidur. Even after tikun, will the tefillin be 100% totally mehudar?

Feedback appreciated



Comments

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. You have touched a subject that should be reviewed in length, and lets call it by its name
    "REPAIRING STa"M".verses "UPGRADING STa"M"
    There are many reasons for a baal magia to fix STa"M.
    1)REPAIRING STa"M - A shaila that was ruled kosher by tinok or by rav, reason to correct that the next magia should not get stuck.
    2)REPAIRING STa"M - A letter that is posul and correcting is allowed, as a square ך or missing a kutzo shel yud.
    3)UPGRADING STa"M - sofer missed a tag or kotz that makes it missing hidur or any other imperfection in letter.
    I believe Rabbi Gutnicks shaila goes into category 3 which is upgrading STa"M.
    In my experience it depends :
    if the sofer missed only a few tagai lamed or a few ך are not kiflayim or a yud as in this post -it should be fixed by the baal magia.
    If the entire tefilin was written in this manner, the baal magia should not upgrade it.
    #1 The possibility of making the tefilin posul is very great.
    #2 In most cases there are other things that are missing in hidur (see the vav in vayhi)
    #3 in this case who says that after all this work the tefilin will be a higher grade of hidur if its kosher its kosher as is, and according to any machmirim fixing might not be allowed so what have we gained.

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  3. My policy is always to fix before upgrading.

    Upgrading is a last resort

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