more about short vavs and illusions
RABOSAI! WHAT IS THIS LETTER?WHEN I BLEW UP THE LETTER AND CUT THE SURROUNDING ITS CLEARLY A YUD,however if you look at the mezuza you might think its a shalas tinok
How about the Bais of Uleovdo?
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Not a "khaf"
This gave me a "Safrut smile"... OK, I realise that this is not Ktav STaM, however it is interesting what happens when graphic/font Hebrew becomes too stylised. Case-in-point, a colleague and I were visiting the mayor's office in the Gaza Belt region of Shaar HaNegev (adjoining Sderot). He is new to reading Hebrew and pronounced the welcome sign as " brooning " or " broobing " (instead of the intended " brookhim ". I replied that he was more correct than the graphic designer, as the letter meant to be a " khaf " was closer to a halakhic "Nun" or "Bet", and had this been Ktav STaM, the letter would likely be considered pasul as a "Khaf".
shin in "Alter Rebbe" script
Both the Shulchan Aruch Harav and the Mishnah Brurah use similar terminology when describing the importance of the shin being "pointy" on the bottom and all three branches of the letter shin meeting at a point or "chad" at the bottom of the letter. There is a strong foundation in Halacha for this and for the bottom of the shin to be flat like a moshav (base) is considered questionable (Pri Megadim) and definitely not Kosher Lechatchillah. It is worse if the moshav is very wide, but it is still questionable if it is lechatchillah if there is a thick noticeable base rather than a chad. Even for Sephardim, who lechatchillah make an angular base, it is still important that the base is indeed on a (significant) angle. If the base is flat, even if all three branches of the shin come out of the base connected , as in the top picture, it is problematic. It is worse in the bottom picture below where the right head/ branch comes out of the right part of the base and the m
Many of the vavim are quite short - although I think that one you singled out may be the worst!
ReplyDeleteI think it relates to R' Moshe's earlier posts on length of vav when comparing to yud etc. In terms of blowing up pictures, I understand the halacha to be that tzurat ha'ot (and all specification critetria in sta"m for that matter) is determined by normal unaided eyesight in normal light conditions.
In this mezuza almost all the regels of the yudim are well shorter than 1 kulmus (some maybe close to 1), and this vav have a regel at least of 1.5 kulmusim. Since when looking at the normal size version the vav clearly looks different from the yudim I would think it's a sheilat tinok at most.
(by the way, me posting comments to these sort of things are in no way indicative of me trying to make a psak - it's just to see if a) my thoughts are correct and b) compare my understanding with those of R' Eli and R' Moshe that can make the psak)