Entire Word Bereishis Written in Large Letters

By -

Is there any mekor for this?

(From a Sefer Torah for sale on ebay: http://tinyurl.com/awll7t5)

Comments

  1. Aaron ShaffierDecember 7, 2012 at 2:52 AM

    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.

    But perhaps I am wrong?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Mordechai Pinchas/Marc MichaelsDecember 7, 2012 at 4:21 AM

    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.
    This fell out of use and is now just a large bet.

    ReplyDelete
  3. YitzchakDecember 16, 2012 at 2:17 PM

    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.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog