BS"D

THE BELLS! THE BELLS!!

Each Letter of the Alefbet is an activator - each has it's own unique holy form & holy sound. Like a rope attached to a bell.

This is why today has been such a horrendous writing day. I'm working very slowly as my hand is sore & then I noticed something on the qlaf. A tiny black dot. It looked as though a dry chip of d'yo had flaked off from somewhere, so I carefull used the schpitz of my quill to try to lift it away. My quill having wet ink on it, I thought this bit of dry ink would stick easily & come off. But instead I wasn't as careful as I thought & ended up leaving a drop of ink on the parchment. This was bad. Each letter in a Sefer Torah must be written lishmah - for the sake of Heaven - & even a drop falling on the parchment without the proper intention constitures SHELO lishmah, so it must be erased before any further writing is done - you're not allowed to turn it into a letter.

So since I couldn't find my glass shard or any sandpaper to take it out with, I plugged in my handy electric eraser (we aren't allowed to use base metal on the qlaf). Once the mark was gone, I realised that I had accidentally smudged the previous letter, a Hey. I felt very discouraged because I don't have time to make mistakes on this Sefer. Mistakes are very time-consuming to correct. So I left it alone & made lunch.

After lunch I went through my notes taken while learning with my sofrim, hoping to find a way to just correct the smudge & not erase the whole letter. We are not allowed to form letters by scraping ink away from them (chok tachut), only by adding ink. But I thought I remembered some erasing/adding exceptions to the rules that I was taught, so I researched all my books.
Nothing.

Then I came upon some entries I made while studying RAMAK with R' Dov:
"Otiyot (Hebrew letters) are not just conventions or images or symbols of sound. They are Ruchaniyot (spirits) whose forms relate to their essential manifestation. They posess a Me'or Nechbad, a particular light, a spiritual reality. Qedushah, Holiness, rests within the form of each Ot (letter)."

So I stopped looking for the shortcut, which ultimately cost me a lot more time than just erasing the whole letter, & I went back to my desk. I felt much more at peace with the situation, so I took out the entire Hey & continued writing.