Shagass Aryeh and Silk Screening

Asked by Josh · May 14, 2004 · Other

Question

You write despairingly of the fact that many sifrei Torah, even in places like the Kotel, are pasul. Accoding to the Shaggas Aryeh all sefarim bezman hazeh are pasul. This is because we are not expert in plene and defective spellings (chaseros veyeseiros). The piskei Tosfos in Menachos, among others, would seem to buttress this contention. If we assume that Minchas Hinuch (who distinguishes b/w pelene and defective spellings that change the meaning and those that dont) is incorrect (not an easy assumption, as it was not shared by, among others, Rav Moshe Feinstein) why do we care about the pasul of ST? why is silk screening even a question for sefarim that are clearly passul anyway? (also: Rosh seems to argue that the appurtenences of Torah learning, and not the sifrei Torah themselves, are the ikar mitzvah of writing a Sefer Torah. Why focus of safrut at all?)

Answer

Answered by Aaron Abadi

It is not so simple. We do need Kosher Sifrei Torah. There is a lot more on this. But I did hear recently that the Klaf (parchment) nowadays almost always comes from China, where they sacrifice the cow and then sell the hides for parchment. Did you hear that too? AA