The International STa"M Forum

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 misconceptions. Rabbi Mendlowitz is not

I have received the above recording from several people over the past few months and I probably should have responded to this earlier. It is indeed disturbing to hear such a distinguished personality in the STa"M world speak with such obvious exaggeration and overt bias against Ksav Chabad* (the Alter Rebbe's Ksav).  Before I respond, here is the background to the recording. The person speaking is Rabbi Reuvain Mendlowitz. He is a popular American sofer and posek residing in Israel who wrote a very well-received  book called "Inside STa"M", available in both English and Hebrew. On the whole, he seems to be quite a learned and sensible person, and I often refer people to his book.  This recording was taken from a talk he gave to a group of Rabbis at Yeshivah University on the topic of "Basics of Hilchos Sta"M For Rabbis", (as a guest of Rabbi Arieh Lebovits). The entire lecture is available online at YUTorah.org. About 15 minutes into his talk he d

 Received this question: what are your thoughts:

 As I'm sure all in the business know, the price of Sifrei Torah, Tefillin and Mezuzos have gone up lately. Furthermore there is a big shortage of items available and sofrim are getting offered more money by desperate wholesalers and retailers who do not have enough stock to meet their demand. Below is a link to an excellent article from a Chabad news website that really explains whats going on in layman's terms. Safrus Shortage Has Caused Serious Lack of Mezuzos, and Sky High Prices • CrownHeights.info – Chabad News, Crown Heights News, Lubavitch News I found this article useful to forward to balebatim and customers who were upset or querying the increase in prices.

Wishing all forum members and readers a mighty Shabbos Beraishis and a successful year ahead! It's been a few months since I've checked this forum, and I see now in the counter we have somehow surpassed over a million hits, which is quite remarkable. I think that with the advent of safrus WhatsApp groups and their ease of use for discussions and shailos, there is no question that this blog has seen better days.  However I should note that this site still gets a healthy amount of visits, mostly because of the nearly 2000 articles and discussions which have been posted over the years, with many hits coming from internet searches on safrus topics. I guess that's one advantage over WhatsApp, the discussions are available for all to see and benefit from, even years later. It was exactly ten years ago, October 2011, when five of us turned an email chain group into an online forum. I'm told that it is now one of the largest safrus resources publicly available, both in Hebrew o