CHAZAQ's Torah Talks #193 Rabbi Yaakov Long - The World of a Scribe

There is a law in the writing called shaloced and that means sequence. Every single letter has got to be written in the exact sequence that we find it in the Torah. Okay, you have a muzzle here. So let's say you have this you have it's written the word first word is shama the shin has to be written properly and the me and then iron. Let's say if all of a sudden you got to write the iron and you saw back that something was incorrectly done by the shin, you're not allowed now to go back and fix the thing in the shin that was not done properly because the shin has got to be exactly done before the writing of the mem and before the writing of the iron and so forth and so on. In other words, it has to be in sequence, a perfect sequence. If it's not, then the muza itself may look perfectly kosher, but it won't be. [Music] And welcome to Torah Talks Kazak's program with special guests. We have with us all the way from Rabbi Yakov. Welcome. How's the doing? Thank God. We are now waiting for the great hag. We're going after poor for the for the and from the we're going to be speaking about the world of safruit the rabbis etc. Rabbi could you uh give us a little bit of background about yourself. Okay. Before we get to that topic, I the most important part because we're dealing with the ciphers was my beginning. I started, we're talking about 50 years ago, uh, as a cipher, just to begin to writing. I had actually been um working in the arts. I was a painter. Um, I don't mean a house painter. Uh I graduated from university with a degree in painting and I came to Israel and I worked in that my the rebby the bells of rebby was pushing me very much to continue in in that area and it became not comfortable for me and my um my wife Oliver Schulam's grandfather was a very very holy sadic and a um his name is Rafulam of Klein who wrote a cipher called um called Cyphereim. He was the one of the world's greatest PO scheme in Hilka Ciphers before the Shawah before the world second world war and it gave me the initiative to start working in that area. So I started first of all in writing and I was able to receive my first um sma in writing from Ravul Yanka Fischer who was a very big uh big pois at the time and um and then I went on to become connected with Vadmish. This was a couple years afterwards uh when I had to be in America for a particular personal reason for a couple years and I was working with them and I started working in examination examination of before that I was just writing now examination is a much much more complicated uh issue because you're working with thousands of different types of cassuvium from all different writers and each one can have a a particular um type of personal problem with it or or not a problem but you have as I say when you're writing for yourself you're writing everything the way you're supposed it's supposed to be but when you're working with many different soy frames so each one you have to deal with on a separate basis uh I started with that and became very much involved with their campaigns and educating the public and working with them on these issues then I went back to Erit Israel and uh continued both in the educational field and in the field of examination. Um odd today and until today that's basically what I what I do. I've I've probably worked with thousands and thousands of cyphereim to upgrade their casab their writing so it should be holically proper according to law the way it's supposed to be and aesthetically proper. And I've probably checked over 400 safer Toras. Wow. Yeah. Very impressive. Unbelievable. Ra Long, one is listening to this and one might be interested and want to know what are the basics or of the responsibilities for a sofur for a scribe that writes for Torah or Muzim. Okay. So let me first I'll read quickly um I'll read quickly a bryer from Arav which discusses the specific point all right and then I'll go into a little bit more specifics this was the beginning of a cypher called kesus a cipher which was a very well-known cypher written by scholre who was the mab or the author of kits shanor um and it was written as in the same vein for to be a kiter shor for the sframe. Uh, of course today we have the Mishna Brewer which is basically telling dealing with the same issues all the involved but on a different in a different vein. Um so the cases first brings uh a you could say a over overright idea of what should a cipher be. So he says sworn who is the one who is kosher who is a proper to write sworn to fill in muzas and to fill in that's the felactories and the muzas that's what we put on the door and to um sell them even a seller of somebody who is dealing with all with stom that's what we call safer to fill in vuzas he has to be also very very um responsible in what he's doing that because He's dealing with the public. Uh so he says here, all right, Tanya Omar Remees. So raer who is the great Revor came to Ravishm was his reb. And Resm asks him he says Ben my son what is your work? What do you do? So he said lavi was a word lavler meant soy at that time that was the word that they used. So he says um that you should know you should be very careful because your work is the work of shmayim. Your work is a very heavenly work. It's a very special work and you have to be very very careful. And he goes to say uh in this bryer he goes to say that if you're missing one letter or adding one letter you could destroy the whole world. It's such a responsibility. You could destroy the whole world. Now it's very hard for us to understand really what that what he's talking about there only because we see that many times we've we have had situations uh that letters are missing and letters are in the world is still cam it's still existing the world. So what did what did he mean to say? He meant to say that you're dealing with a world of mitzvah. You're your work what you do is allowing people and enabling people to observe these very very important mitzvah of the Torah the mitzvah of mudas and safer Torah. And if you're not careful with what you do, whether it's because of it's missing actually a letter itself or it's missing the of the letter, it could be missing one small part of the letter and also can be considered not kosher. Now this if you're not careful with this then you're going to be creating a situation where the person you are working where you're giving this to will not be able to observe the mitzvah of muz or sorah which basically will destroy their world as everybody knows who as we are mitzvah observers people that our fill in our muzz is what really makes up our world and so you can in that respect you can understand what he's saying that if you're missing a letter or actually or adding a letter or in any way, shape or form doing something that will not be cautionary, you're destroying that person's world, spiritual world. Okay, let's go on to to describe a cipher itself. There are three very important aspects that a cipher has got to have and they are interrelated. One of them he has to have is he has to know perfectly. He has to know the laws of of everything in the soy world and he should be certified. I personally do not deal with if I sell something or if I'm working with if they're not certified by based in then I'm not going to utilize their what they're bringing me. I'm not going to utilize their their stump. So they have to be certified and know all the different laws involved. Let's say for instance in a misuda itself there are 4,000 laws that go into the creation of one misa parchment. That's a lot of laws. So he has to be knowledgeable of all those laws. That's number one. Number two is he has to be he has to be a sham because many of these things fear of heaven excuse me fear of heaven. Fear of shim fear of yeah fear of shmim shim means the fear of God and fear of heaven because many of the things that are related to the writing of ciphers are things that you cannot see and you don't know because there is a there is a law in the writing called shaloced that means sequence every that is in regards to fillinous says it's not safe for Torah every single letter has got to be written in exact sequence that we find it in the Torah. That is let's say for instance if you have a muza okay you have a muza here right I see if you can see it I don't know it's not so clear all right so let's say you have this you have it's written the word first word is shama the shin has to be written properly properly and the me and then let's say if all of a sudden you got to write to iron and you saw back that something was incorrectly done by the shin you're not allowed now to go back and fix that proper to fix the thing in the shin that was not done properly because the shin has got to be exactly done before the writing of the me and before the writing of the of the iron and so forth and so on. In other words, it has to be in sequence, a perfect sequence. If it's not, then the muza itself may look perfectly kosher, but it won't be. It won't be kosher at all. And no one will know that. That means your shaman that means fear of heaven, fear of God that you're doing everything properly even though it's not something that we can see. Um, and the third thing is the ability of the sipher to have um artistic uh abilities that he has to be able to manifest all his knowledge of the of the laws in the writing that he does. If he can't, let's say he knows all the laws of how to write a base, the base is the second letter of the alpha of the Jewish alphabet. But when it comes to utilizing the pen that he has to write that, it just doesn't work out. He's not able to do it. And sometimes it may be hidden from him. He may not even be able to understand that he's doing something incorrectly. All right? So he has to have that ability to to see both himself and to to artistically manifest what he's doing and what his knowledge of the is into the writing. These are all interconnected as I said and if one of one of them is missing then it could invalidate the whole sora and no one will know one will know. Um, so that's basics. All right, that's um there's many hundreds of stories that can be brought up concerning all these different things to show examples, but I think we're time limited, so I don't want to go into them. Um, but I will show you that we want I would like to discuss the problems in the field of examination and the the lack of um knowledge of soy and the problems that I I come up with. Let me just I think I'm I was going to show you the actual paria itself. Um but I think it'll be easier with my um I'll describe try to describe it to you so that you can understand um what the this particular problem is. I was going to also ask you about the computer examining right this I want to go into but I just want to make one show one examination one example of what I'm talking about about the problems of examination the problems of the ciphers that cipher that are not trained properly today many cypher take courses that are very superficial and they don't get the real knowledge that they need and and and so when they're having as it is they're starting go off from the wrong foot. Um, let me just show you this. It's a very hard thing to to see. Now, what it is is very simple. I'm going to explain to you what this is. I received departure from a cipher, actually from a dealer that I work for, from a cipher that he's been dealing with for many, many years. And I've checked I checked hundreds of his pares. Um, I received this particular para. All right. as you see at the bottom line here. All right, you see that he squeezed this in very very much. All right, what happened was when he wrote that last last line, he didn't do it properly. So he got to the end of it and he tried to make all the lettering very very small so so that there would be a little bit of room left. a little bit of room left as you see over here because they're obligated to have a certain amount of spacing left so that it's considered a separate part. All right, it's an ending. It's part of the laws of spacing and he knew the cipher knew that this particular dealer that he's dealing with is very very careful about this particular law. So what happened? He got there and he didn't have enough space. So he took the the rat here. You see this rat? He extended it to give more space at the bottom here. So that it would be according to law kosher. But that but then what happened was he left these it would he wound up having these two lines here too short over here is too short and two here is too short. So he had to deal with that problem. So how did he deal with the problem? He dealt with the problem by doing two two incorrect things that are according to law. He he this was Hashem. This was the name of Hashem here. It's it's according to to law. One is is forbidden to destroy the name of God. All right? And that means if you have a written name of God, you're not allowed to erase that. So he erased it over here. This was the showing. I have it here in the paral. This was the first foot of that last hay of Hashem. He erased it and he made it longer. All right. So in that one action that he did, he did two forbidden things according to the Torah. He was moe. He cut off Hashem as part of Hashem's name. And he made this letter out of sequence. All right. Now down here, he did the same thing. This tough letter tough was extended only to here before he cut it off. He cut the leg off of the tough and extended it over to here. That way it was all nice and even. When I saw this, I almost fainted because it was such an obvious thing that a cipher did to and so improper improperly done and showed that the cipher knew nothing about the laws of ciphers and he's been working for so many years with this other dealer. It was a terrible, terrible thing to see. I see many many things with soy and many many stories of problems that they have because they're not trained properly and this was just one that's in a very extreme example of what can happen and if one is not knowledgeable and they don't know then this would have been passed on and someone would have been utilizing this pair to fill in. Um you wanted to ask another question. Oh, about the computer examination. Computer examination is like this. It seems, it sounds to everybody that it must be 100% correct. If you're going to computer examine something with a computer, everything should be perfect. And it's just not like that. It's just not that's not what happens. The scanner scans your filler or whatever it is, the pario, the the parchment, and sends out information. Now if the particular person that's looking over this is not awake properly and he doesn't see the information correctly then he can let it pass without and this is very very pertinent especially in in cphrra where there's you're talking about um a very massive amount of work and that a person the the the the computer is going to scan and throw out a whole big dooff or page of problems. It could be hundreds and hundreds of problems. Then it go it's because it's departmentamentalized. Then it goes to someone to do corrections. The cipher himself will not do the actual corrections or or fixing the parchment. It will go to someone else and he'll take that picture that this this paper with all the the problems and he'll fix everything supposedly. Then it goes to the cipher to write in the spaces that he fixed and then it goes back. Now through all these things that are happening many many mistakes can happen and I've seen it constantly that we have we found a lot of times mistakes after the computer supposedly examined it. It wasn't the computer that made the mistakes. It was the person because the person was not being knowledge not being careful with what he was doing. Um I have this right now I'm with a whole issue with the safer Torah that that they printed that they checked it improperly and then they sent out the wrong the wrong information alto together. Um so it's a it's something that we again are come back to these to the ben uam the personal touch that needs to be utilized to when checking to fill in maz. Yeah. I wanted to ask you about uh people that have you know the the 21st century people are buying stuff online. Yeah. This is something what I said that is I I must touch on right now with what I understand from the rabbi. It's so important that you have a trustworthy sofa tribe that to just do it online I I just don't uh I can just imagine it not being so simple. Um I've had a lot of problems with people purchasing things online. The first um time I really had exposure to problems of buying online was many years ago. I would say probably maybe 20 years ago. I work now in communities in Philadelphia area in New Jersey and also in New Relle um exa examining people's philoses working on their their the bakim or the housing of the working on them and selling to them whatever they need uh it's been an a very important part of their life since I've been there because they've the been able to upgrade their mitzvah observance tremendously. Hashem. So, one of the people that I deal with all the time, he brought me muza. The first time I met him, he brought me that he had bought online from someone who many years back when I were working with Vad Mam, he had been on the list of certified and um Vadim, he had a store in Flatbush. And I received these mus this this owner that were bought by him online. And I was devastated from what I was seeing. The hund the MS look very very nice but there were many many many improperly improper things done in the MS. They were totally possible. I had to work a great deal on these MSEes to rectify the problems that that existed there. Um and then I found out from other people who were working in the area that that the um this particular store has lost their certification. All right. Now, this is going all the time and people don't know. They go to many many different sites and they find things that look like they they're going to be good, but in the end they wind up uh not being certified properly and not having what you know getting what they want. Now, um, we were thinking of going online or or making a website, myself and my my friend who is actually doing the camera work over here and Rab Nathaniel Epstein who is called the talisman and we've worked together in association for many years. working with the talises and I'm working with the stom and we've gone around and whatever and we were he has a website and we were thinking of putting stom on the website for me working it and it came to me that I decided to go on to online and just check something out. All right, something that I thought did not exist anymore. I understood that fraud, cautious fraud was something that was basically taking being taken care of. I went on to Amazon, all right, and I asked for misus. I wanted to buy muzzles. First, they have the well-known paper mis that they don't say that it's any better that they're selling you a case. They're selling you a case for $10 and it includes in it this paper mism. All right. They're not, as I say, they're not saying that it's kosher. They they know people are not that stupid, you know, that they that they would think it's kosher. So then they have the next level of of muzas that they're selling. I will read to you the description kosher muza scroll muza parchment. Of course they translated it written in Israel by cyer stam. Now I this was a tragic thing to see such a thing like this. First of all, to to use the word and to profane the word of cypher stam uh was very annoying to me. This was the muza that they were showing for sale for $39. All right. Now, I will show you this muza. In going over this muza, I found pulim. All right. 94 puli. I would say that uh 90% of the pulim are pula that according to the Torah that cannot be fixed. All right. Now, this type of muza, when I find it by a person that brings me muzzas, I usually tell them that this muza was probably written by either children or women or Arabs that sit together and write commercially muzas that have no that have no hookic integrity. What? But the lettering is not is not is not Jewish lettering. All right, that's what I tell people. So, I was shocked. I was shocked when I saw that this is something that's being sold. And not only that, he says that they say that Amazon is saying that they um sell over 300 of these a month. All right. So, I just want to read you. It says some of the reviews um that these people uh that these people said, "I have ordered this before. Absolutely perfect. This is the god of the Jew, the poor Jewish person that is being finagled out of his mitzvah. By the way, there's three um three types of of of geneva or or robbery that's being done here. One is one of money that the the Amazon is stealing their money. The second thing they're stealing it's what's called gene das. They're making them believe that they're getting something that they're not getting and they're also stealing their mitzvah observance. So this poor guy writes, "I have ordered this before. Absolutely perfect. I ordered one more only one and received a bund a bundle of 50. Amazon doesn't acknowledge situations like this." Whatever. And it says the you can't have a misa without a scroll to bless your home. I have one on every door except in the bathroom. Great value of this scroll. And it goes on and on and on of people that are telling um everybody how happy they are. And it got by the way five and a half or five stars for their reputation of selling resis. I'm now making an appeal to Rabonim and to people that are involved in in fraud in cautious fraud that this is on a daily basis. People are being stolen. Their mitzvah are being stolen from them. I'm asking if you want to get in touch with me, I'm not the one to deal with it. It needs to be dealt with through reabonium in America and through the lawyers that deal with with fraud, cautious fraud. There's no greater cautious fraud than this that cautious fraud of meat production is one thing. It's one it's one thing, but it doesn't go and destroy the home of people. Muzas are what we call in the on the back of the muza it's written shiny. It's the word of Hashem and it also means Shimir Dalso Israel. The the muza is the guardian of the doors of the Jewish people. And it means that every single thing that could be that could be wrong in a mazuza, I've had stories, hundreds and hundreds of stories will affect the person's life totally both in health, in wealth, and in every way. The muza will affect that person's person's life. And we it's probably better not to have any misa on your door at all than to have a misuza that's going to affect you negatively, such as these misuz. We have a minute. grab a long and that and that is a final message for our broad audience. If you want to contact me um I have a picture of my email card but or of my my uh my card but you can contact me at any time at Y Lam that's yakov long stom y lamgmail.com. All right. Um, final message would be that it's everyone has got to be very very careful to make sure that whenever they purchase the fill in the resistance, it's done through only through certified cipher and ones who are working in this in a very deep and very responsible way. Don't just go and buy things anywhere and and especially not in shops that are dedicated to selling Judea because on the most part they are not they're not certified and they have no ability to um to examine fill properly. They are basically there as a conduit to make some business and to get some get someone um Mrs. to fill them but 99% of the time they are not not qualified to do so and we should have the should be and we should be able to be m all the mitzvah in totality and which is the of the will of Hashem thank you for allowing on this interview and uh appreciate being with you we should only Good news Rabbi Yak from the world of fruit like mentioned in the beginning a lot of different and reviewing them and we should only hear good news it's eye opening we have to make sure to get it from a reliable source and we like the rabbi said we see the gula redemption I want to thank our friends at tory time miss rebana epste for being the shhatan over here for introducing Kazak Rabong. Thank you, the talisman. And uh to our friends at Torah Anytime, thank you for hosting this Torah Talk along with uh all of our other platforms that are hosting us. We appreciate it. Special thank you to daily giving. day goes very far away and we should only hear Mr. Shak. [Music]