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A sofer at work, Ein Bokek, Israel A sofer sews together the pieces of parchment A sofer, sopher, sofer SeTaM, or sofer ST"M (Hebrew: סופר סת״ם, "scribe"; plural soferim, סופרים) is a Jewish scribe who can transcribe Sifrei Kodesh (holy scrolls), tefillin (phylacteries), mezuzot (ST"M, סת״ם, is an abbreviation of these three terms) and other religious writings.
Ktav Stam (Hebrew: כְּתַב־סְתָ״ם ) is the specific Jewish traditional writing with which holy scrolls (Sifrei Kodesh), tefillin and mezuzot are written. Stam is a Hebrew acronym denoting these writings, as indicated by the gershayim (״ ) punctuation mark. One who writes such articles is called a sofer stam.
A Torah scroll (Hebrew: סֵפֶר תּוֹרָה, Sefer Torah, lit. "Book of Torah"; plural: סִפְרֵי תוֹרָה Sifrei Torah) is a handwritten copy of the Torah, meaning the five books of Moses (the first books of the Hebrew Bible). The Torah scroll is mainly used in the ritual of Torah reading during Jewish prayers.
The words of the Torah are written on a scroll by a scribe in Hebrew. A Torah portion is read every Monday morning and Thursday morning at a shul (synagogue) but only if there are ten males above the age of thirteen. Reading the Torah publicly is one of the bases of Jewish communal life.
The resulting words of the rearrangement are marked with gershayim. When listing the letters themselves. For example, ְמְנַצְפַּ״ך menatzpach lists all the Hebrew letters having special final forms at the ends of words. When spelling out a letter. In this way, אַלֶ״ף spells out alef א, and יוּ״ד spells out yud י.
A close-up of a Torah scroll, showing tagin decorations on the Hebrew letters. The passage is Numbers 18:27–30. About the 2nd century CE, a work called Sefer Tagin (ספר תאגין or ספר תאגי) emerged attributed to Rabbi Akiva which laid out the 1960 places where modified tagin or letter forms occur in a Torah scroll.
A tiqqun soferim (scribes' tikkun) is similar, but is designed as a guide or model text for scribes writing a copy of the Torah by hand.It contains additional information of use to scribes, such as directions concerning writing particular words, traditions of calligraphic ornamentation, and information about spacing and justification.
The mitzvah to write a Torah scroll (Hebrew: מצוות כתיבת ספר תורה) is the last mitzvah of the 613 Jewish commandments. It mandates Jews to write a Torah scroll for themselves. The source of the mitzvah is from what is said in Parashat Vayelech in Book of Deuteronomy: