Torah Scroll, [Iberian Peninsula: ca. 1470]

Scroll (2 ft. x 164 ft.; 610 mm x 50 m) on gevil (parchment processed for writing on the hair-side only and prepared with salt, flour, and mei afatsim [gallnut juice]) coated with a dark brown varnish typical of Sephardic Torah scrolls; written in Sephardic square script in black ink on 67 membranes (widths varying from 22 to 35 7/8 in.; 560 to 910 mm) with three to five columns per membrane (except the last, which has two) and forty-two lines per column (average column height: 17 in.; 430 mm :: and width: 5 1/2 to 6 1/4 in.; 140 to 160 mm); probably copied by two scribes; horizontally and vertically ruled in hardpoint. Occasional light spots representing erasures with corrected text clearly written over; intermittent defects in sewing between membranes sometimes repaired with vellum patches on verso; intermittent tears and minor fraying to margins; one small wormhole through each column of the first ten membranes. Mounted on modern wooden rollers.

One of five surviving pre-Expulsion Sephardic Torah scrolls in private hands and one of only two medieval Sephardic scrolls known to observe the ancient custom of “anomalous” and “curved” letters.

Containing the text of the Pentateuch and written by hand on specially-prepared animal skins by a trained scribe according to traditions that date back thousands of years, the Torah scroll is the most sacred ritual artifact of the Jewish faith and is most often used for public worship services in Jewish communities around the world. The present scroll is remarkable not only for its rarity as a survivor of the expulsions of Jews from medieval Iberia, but even more so as a witness (in its first twenty-one membranes) to the ancient tradition of writing specific occurrences of various letters in special forms (spiraled, curved, etc.) and/or with serifs known as tagin (crowns or tittles).

In a famous passage, the Talmud (Menahot 29b) discusses the significance of the tagin in halakhic terms, while kabbalistic sources impute mystical meanings to these diminutive ornaments. The ancient Sefer tagei, whose preface traces its own transmission from Joshua to Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi (second-third centuries CE), records nearly two thousand instances throughout the Pentateuch where certain letters are to be crowned with one to seven strokes, or else otherwise unusually written. No less an authority than Rabbi Moses Maimonides (1138-1204) regarded the “anomalous” and “curved” letters, as well as the tagin, to be essential elements of a Torah scroll written in the most halakhically optimal fashion (Hilkhot tefillin u-mezuzah ve-sefer torah 7:8-9).

In practice, because these special adornments were not absolutely necessary for a Torah scroll to be considered ritually fit for use, and because at a certain historical stage scribes were no longer deemed sufficiently knowledgeable in how to fulfill the details of these traditions, the custom of following the prescriptions of Sefer tagei all but died out in most communities (with the exception of some Yemenite groups that maintained the “spiral pe”). Indeed, among the extant corpus of pre-Expulsion Sephardic Torah scrolls, only this one and another sold in our New York rooms in November 2009 are known to observe these ancient rules; though the present scroll’s tradition differs somewhat from that recorded in Sefer tagei and may in fact represent an independent tradition.

Additional noteworthy features relate to the text and layout of the scroll itself. Gen. 9:29 reads Va-yehi kol yemei noah in the singular, instead of Va-yihyu in the plural, and petsua dakkah in Deut. 23:2 is spelled with a final he, not an alef. Furthermore, the “open” and “closed” parashiyyot (paragraphs) of this scroll follow almost perfectly the specifications set by Maimonides in his Hilkhot tefillin u-mezuzah ve-sefer torah, ch. 8. By contrast, interestingly, the Song of the Sea and the Song of Moses are split in their observance of Maimonides’ prescriptions. The first, written on thirty lines, ends in two lines laid out like brickwork, in consonance with authentic Sephardic traditions but at odds with Maimonides’; while the second, written on sixty-seven lines, agrees with Maimonides’ directives and sheds light on how his words were understood in fifteenth-century Iberia. In Hilkhot tefillin u-mezuzah ve-sefer torah 8:12, he lists the beginning word of each line of the song, and for line 39, he writes that it should start with gam (also) in Deut. 32:25, without specifying whether he is referring to gam bahur (both youth) or gam betulah (and maiden) in that verse. The present scroll starts the line gam bahur and thus bears witness to an old Sephardic tradition regarding how to interpret Maimonides’ words.

Complete Torah scrolls from pre-Expulsion Iberia are extremely rare, and only five are known to be held privately. The fact that this scroll also preserves numerous time-honored traditions, especially the “anomalous” and “curved” letters, makes it an even more valuable monument to medieval Sephardic civilization and religious practice.

A report with the carbon-14 dating of this scroll is available upon request.