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
30 inch or 30cm?
ReplyDeleteIf it's 30 inches , which is massive, just take a 15cm mezuzah and just multiply everything by 5 (sirtut, gilyonos, kulmus size etc)
DeleteI'm sorry, I meant 30 cm. thanks
ReplyDeleteThe formula of the size of the line in a mezuza is height/23.5 so in this case 30/23.5 = 1.276 cm. The top gilyon is the same as a regular line and from the bottom sirtut the space of 1.5 lines.
ReplyDeleteIn the beginning - the space that equals somewhere between 3.5 to 4 lines so in this case between 4.46 to 5.1 cm, and at the end just whats needed for hekef gvil but it is better to leave more - in this case I would say about 1.5-2 cm.
The length of the line itself is very individual, depending on how long (or short) is your writing. In one klaf store I once asked they told me that they make it 24 cm but I personally think its to much. I tried once on a piece of klaf and I got to 21-22 cm. The best thing is to try yourself: prepare a kulmus of the correct size and write line number 8, 11 or 21 (those are "standard" size lines) and see what are the results. then see if you can write in that length line 3 or 16 ( the "squeezed" lines) and adjust accordingly.