The International STa"M Forum

To further enhance the accessibility and ease of use of this forum, you can now access the stam forum directly through www.stamforum.com rather than going through blogspot. However will still access it even through blogspot.com if you want. Apologies to those who tried to access the forum during the transition of hosting which did not allow access for some time.

Someone had to write a daled and by mistake wrote a hei. However the gag of the hei was written like a reish. Once they erase the "yud" of the hei and are left with a "reish" may they simply add an eikav onto the reish and make it into a daled. Or must they also be mavatel the tzurah of the "reish" before now writing the the daled. I have tzaddidim l'can u'l'can however I'd like to hear from the olam first.

In our families we rely on the K9 Internet filter. http://www1.k9webprotection.com/ It is a filter which is easy to set up and fine tune to specific needs. The best part - it is free. By tuning it ourselves, we can filter out what we don't want to see, and we are not subjected to censoring which is part of other filters. After the filter is set up and tuned, under the wife/mother supervision, the wife/mother chooses a password and does not tell anyone what it is. This way it is impossible to "cheat" on the filter. If a certain kosher site happens to be blocked, the wife/mother enters her password, the site is added to the kosher list or the filtering parameters get corrected. Then, the filter gets locked again. Highly recommended.

The tefillin (pshutim)is a little roundish on the top corner I hope the pictures help a little, any advice to square this corner. Wetting does not help by thin pshutim. Are these tefillin still kosher lebracha? The Aruch Hashulchan is very lenient in this issue.

We had an argument in shul today if it is permissable to sell Stam, particularly Sifrei torah, to reform and conservative shules. can anyone please shed some light on what is done and accepted in this regard amoungst heimishe sochrim and sofrim in the USA?

I just got an email from someone who was asked to paint a design on a megila. She would like advice with regard to the type of paint that can be used. I personally have never done anything like this, but I assume there are people in the group who can advise…

Last Thursday, Rabbi Frand spoke about the inverted Nuns of Parshat Behalotcha in his popular weekly shiur. This is a very important topic for all sofrim and I got his permission to put up his shiur in my blog for one week (you must pay to get his weekly shiurim so this was a very big favour). I will eventually put everything he said in writing so I can keep it available but I would not miss this chance to hear a Safrut shiur from one of the very best orators out there. The link  http://lavlor.blogspot.be/2012/06/inverted-nuns.html

The Yudim of beisecha and vimai (are the worst of these yudim), what is there status? Kosher as is etc...

reish                                                                                   tof? Obviously this guy is a maschil

Have come across this a few times I need an opinion for this one Shelas Chochom. Lammed of Al

The Yudim of the words Yifteh and Vahayu? Besides for the Aleph of Af.

http://failedmessiah.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451b71f69e20163061ac560970d-pi I just got mailed this article, what are your thoughts?

Shalom all. Am currently repairing a torah and have reached parshat Pinchas - always the worst condition as we know. However I think someone may well have got there before me as you recall the erroneous 'chametz - chamin' repair that someone had made that I uploaded recently. Well I think someone has also repaired the vav k'tiah in shalom (see below) as there is a little blob of ink on where the break would have been. Now technically this is not pasul as all of the visual midrashim ( as I like to call them - i.e. large, small, broken, bent letters etc) are just minhagim passed down from sofer to sofer, but we are nonetheless enjoined to 'fix' them if we come across them not being there.Now if this is kasher as it stands then what is the best way of fixing? Making a break would constitute chok tochot. Scraping the entire regel and writing afresh is the obvious answer, but here I am scraping a technically kasher letter to create a deliberately broken letter (tho

shailos tinuk would be problematic because the tagin would throw him off

Its the vov from uvechol

A sofer by mistake wrote צורישדי as 2 words and was makadesh the "שדי" before writing it. The question is now what should be done. They want try and be makarev the oisios so it should become one word. However if they were already makesh the second word perhaps it's a problem then of being mochek the Shem?

The argument of Rashi and Rebeinu Tam (havios smuchos...) concerning the order of placing the parshiyos in the Tefillin is actually recorded already from the Geonic period and existed most probably well before. Someone asked me how can it be that we do not have the concrete mesora of how the Tefillin Parshiyos were placed in? Could it be that through the harsh golus this issue became lost from us? (although that the olam follows Rashi as the ikar). The other question I was asked -Did all of Am Yisroel put on Tefillin in the Midbar or did this become more universal to all of am yisroel well afterwards, and if so when? I would like to share your answers with this questioner. Thanks,

There are several references in the sources to the need of ink to be ink (Dio) and not paint (Tzeva). I did not find, however, a definition of what is  Dio and what is  Tzeva. Is there such a definition? Is such a definition agreed upon by all Poskim, or are there differences? Gut Yom Tov to all.

In many ways, as sofrim who are osek in writing, fixing, checking and selling sifrei Torah, Zman Matan Toroseinu has an extra special significance.  So I would like to wish one and all a freilichen Yom Tov, may we be mekabel the Torah "besimchah ubepnimiyus" and may we all have continued success in our holy work!

Can there be an issue of shinui tzura with some of these Peis?