Menachot 30a — the Talmud in English

He said to him

Rabbi Abba:

We said

that the Torah scroll is invalid

only when there are omissions

when four letters are missing on every page

but with additions, we have no concern!

And he can scrape away the additions.

Up to here, the Gemara explained Rav’s first statement!

The other

the second statement that Rav said concerning the laws of a Torah scroll, and which is challenged by the beraita, is this:

for Rav said: One who writes a Torah scroll, and comes to finish

the last verse in the portion of “And This Is the Blessing”

finishes

the writing

even in the middle of the page,

and he need not finish writing the Torah scroll specifically at the end of the page. [A page means an entire column in a Torah scroll].

A challenge was raised: One who writes a Torah scroll, and comes to finish

writing the scroll at the conclusion of the portion of “And This Is the Blessing,”

may not finish in the middle of the page in the manner

in which he can

finish

at the conclusion of the other

books of the Torah.

Rather, he shortens

the lines

and proceeds

continually narrowing their width until he finishes the words at the end of the scroll, “before the eyes of all Israel”

at the end of the page.

And this beraita is difficult for Rav, who permits finishing in the middle of the page.

And we answer:

When Rav said

that one can finish in the middle of the page,

it was concerning the books of the Torah,

which are made and written on a sheet like a Torah scroll, but are not bound together and are not made with the sanctity of a Torah scroll; rather, each book was written separately.

And we wonder:

But he said “Torah scroll,”

Rav; and how can it be said that Rav was speaking about individual books of the Torah?

And we answer: What Rav said—that one can finish in the middle of the page—he said concerning the conclusion of

the books of the Torah within a Torah scroll

such as at the conclusion of Genesis, Exodus, and so on. But at the conclusion of the Torah scroll itself, in the portion of “And This Is the Blessing,” at the verse “before the eyes of all Israel,” Rav agrees that one must finish at the end of the page.

And we refute this:

Is that so? But Rabbi Joshua bar Abba said that Rav Giddel said that Rav said: “Before the eyes of all Israel”

was written

in the middle of the page!

And it is proven that even at the conclusion of the Torah scroll Rav said that one may finish it in the middle of the page!?

And we answer:

That

which Rav said, that “before the eyes of all Israel” was written in the middle, does not mean the middle of the page; rather, he meant

in the middle of the line

the last line of the scroll. But Rav agrees that one must finish at the end of the page.

It was stated: The Rabbis say:

It is possible to finish “before the eyes of all Israel” in the middle of the page

and even in the middle of a line!

Rav Ashi said: “Before the eyes of all Israel” was written

in a line

specifically in the middle,

but not in the middle of the page; rather, at its end, so that everyone would know that this is the conclusion of the Torah [Taz].

Rabbi Joshua bar Abba said that Rav Giddel said that Rav said:

The last eight verses

of the Torah,

from the verse “And Moses died there,”

a single person

one person

reads them in the synagogue

before the congregation, for they do not interrupt at those verses so that another person may stand and read the portion 44 .

And we explain:

According to whom

was this law stated?

Not according to Rabbi Shimon!

For it was taught:

It is stated in the verse,

“And Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there.” And is it possible

for

Moses to be alive, and to have written

himself

“And Moses died there”

while he was still alive?

Rather, until here Moses wrote,

whereas

from here

from this verse, “And Moses died there”

and onward, Joshua son of Nun wrote; these are the words of Rabbi Judah. And some say

there are those who say that

Rabbi Nehemiah

said this.

Rabbi Shimon said to him:

But

is it possible

that

a Torah scroll is lacking

even

a single letter,

and Moses calls it “a Torah scroll”!?

And it is written

in the portion of “And Moses went,” “And Moses commanded the Levites, etc.,”

‘Take this Torah scroll and place it’

etc. Since you said that Moses did not write those last eight verses, the Torah scroll was therefore lacking; and how did Moses tell the Levites to take “the Torah scroll”!?

Rather, until here the Holy One, blessed is He, speaks

to Moses,

and Moses repeats

after Him, so that he would not err ,

and writes. From here,

from the beginning of these eight verses

and onward, the Holy One, blessed is He, speaks,

and Moses writes with tears

and did not repeat after the Holy One, blessed is He, because of the intensity of his anguish 46 .

As it is stated below,

in the Book of Jeremiah, when Baruch explained to the officials how he wrote the Scroll of Lamentations:

“And Baruch said to them: From his mouth he would read to me,

Jeremiah

all these words, and I would write them in the scroll with ink.”

And it implies that Jeremiah uttered the words of prophecy, while Baruch merely wrote them and did not repeat them with his mouth, since they were words of lamentation and he was in anguish.

And we explain:

Let us say

perhaps we should say that the statement of Rav Giddel said in the name of Rav, that one person reads the eight verses, is

not according to Rabbi Shimon.

For according to Rabbi Shimon, since Moses wrote them, they are no different from the other verses of the Torah, between which one may interrupt, and another may read part of them.

And we answer:

Even if you say it is according to Rabbi Shimon,

nevertheless one may not interrupt within them,

since it was changed,

for they were changed from the other verses in that they were written with tears; therefore

it was changed

also their law from that of the other verses of the Torah scroll, so that only one person reads them in the synagogue 47 .

And Rabbi Joshua bar Abba said that Rav Giddel said that Rav said: One who purchases

one who buys

a Torah scroll from the marketplace

is

like one who “snatches” a mitzva from the marketplace,

for although he fulfilled the mitzva, nevertheless, had he written the Torah scroll and labored over it, he would have had an additional mitzva 48 .

If he wrote it

and did not purchase it from the marketplace,

Scripture regards him as though he received it from Mount Sinai! [

For the attribute of mercy has grounds to say that just as he labored here, so would he have labored to go in the wilderness in order to receive the Torah from Mount Sinai. Nimukei Yosef].

Rav Sheshet said: If he corrected

a person, in a Torah scroll

even a single letter

that had an error in it,

Scripture regards him

as

as though he wrote it.

And he is no longer considered like one who snatches a mitzva from the marketplace 49 .

The Sages taught: A person makes a sheet

of a Torah scroll

from one containing three pages up to one containing eight pages.

That is, every sheet may contain from three pages up to eight pages.

Fewer than this

than three pages,

and more than this

than eight pages,

he may not make!

He may not make fewer than three pages so that the stitches will not be close to one another, for it is not an adornment for a Torah scroll that its stitches should be adjacent . And he may not make more than eight pages so as not to distance the stitches excessively, since the stitches add adornment to a Torah scroll 51 .

Nor may he make more than eight columns, so that the stitches will not be too far apart, since the stitches add beauty to a Torah scroll. 51.

And he should not increase

to make eight

pages

in a sheet when he has a small sheet,

because

the pages will be narrow in their width

and each page will appear

each page

like a letter,

and not like a page of a book.

And he should not reduce

to make three

pages

that are wide in a sheet when he has a large sheet,

because his eyes wander

when he comes to read, because of the width of the lines, and he errs at the beginnings of the lines.

Rather,

the measure of the width of a page for the mitzva is

for example,

that he can write in it

“according to your families” three times!

And its measure is a handbreadth. [Glosses of Maimonides].

If a sheet came before him

which, according to the measure of the other pages in that scroll, is a sheet

of nine pages,

and he must divide it, as we said, that he may not make a sheet of more than eight pages,

he should not divide

the sheet in the measure of

three

pages

on this side

and in the measure of

six on this side. Rather,

he should divide it

four

pages

on this side, and five

pages on this side, so that one will not be much larger than the other 52 .

In what matter are these words said

that he should neither reduce nor increase the number of pages,

at the beginning of the scroll,

and in its continuation;

but at the end of the scroll, even if

he has to write only

one verse,

he should write it over the entire sheet,

and even one page

he should make from the entire sheet.

And we consider this: But

“one verse”—can it enter your mind?

For he must finish the Torah scroll at the end of the page, and how can one verse fill the entire sheet?

And we answer:

Rather, say

that he can make

one verse on one page

by shortening the lines and writing one word on each line, so that he finishes the verse at the end of the page [and the rest of the sheet may remain blank] 53 .

And the beraita continues:

The measure of the margin

the blank space that one must leave in a Torah scroll:

below,

at the end of the writing, he leaves

a handbreadth

blank.

Above,

it is sufficient to leave

three fingerbreadths,

for the hand does not handle the upper margin as it does the lower one [Nimukei Yosef].

And between page and page

he leaves

the space of two fingerbreadths.

And in the books of the Torah,

which are not made as a Torah scroll, but are made with the margins of a Torah scroll,

below

he leaves

three fingerbreadths; above, two fingerbreadths.

And between

each

page and page

in the books of the Torah he leaves

a space the width of a thumb.

And between

each

line [

line]

and line

he shall leave a space, both in a Torah scroll and in the books of the Torah,

the width of a line.

And between

each

word and word

he shall leave a space

the width of a small letter [yod] 54 .

a yod]. 54.

And between

each

letter and letter

he shall leave a space

the width of a hairsbreadth.

And likewise,

a person should not reduce

who writes a Torah scroll

the writing.

That is, the writer should plan the form of the writing in advance, so that he will not reach a situation in which he must reduce the normal size of the letters elsewhere in the scroll and thereby impair the beauty of the writing; for if some of the letters are large and some are small, the writing will not be beautiful. [Nimukei Yosef] 55 .

and he should plan his writing היטב so that he will not need to make the letters smaller

not on account of space at the bottom,

on the lower side of the sheet, so that it will have the proper measure of space.

and not on account of space at the top,

so that there will be a measure of three fingerbreadths of blank sheet.

and not on account of space between one line and another.

That is, he should plan so that it does not happen that two lines whose ruling is close together come to be [written], and so that, in order that space the full length of a line should remain for him between one line and another, he would be forced to make the letters smaller; and it would result that those letters in those two lines would be smaller than the letters in the other lines.

and not on account of space between one section and another,

in accordance with the law of the space between an open section or a closed section [as will be explained below].

And if

it happened to him

the scribe of a Torah scroll to write

a word of five letters

at the end of the line, and there was not enough room on the line to write the entire word, אלא he must continue it outside the line, beyond the ruling of the sheet, then

he should not write two

letters

inside the sheet and three

letters

outside the sheet [

that is, in the space between the sheets],