Mishneh Torah, Book of Love: On Writing Scrolls

Moses Maimonides

Laws of Tefillin, Mezuzah, and Sefer Torah, 8:4–5

ca. 1178

Laws of Tefillin, Mezuzah, and Sefer Torah, 8:4–5

As in all the scrolls I have seen, I noticed serious incorrectness in these regards, while authorities on the Masorah, who write treatises and compilations with the aim of pointing out the sections that are closed and those that are open, differ according to the variations in the scrolls on which…

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In this brief excerpt from the Book of Love (Sefer ahavah), which covers the laws of prayer and the writing of sacred texts, Maimonides reports that he had seen many discrepancies in the practice of copying Torah scrolls. Different authorities preserved different traditions for composing “closed” and “open” sections, that is, when a break is either closed by a word at the end of a line or is left open with no word at the end. Most scholars today believe that the codex he mentions is the same as what is now known as the Aleppo Codex, which was brought to Aleppo by one of Maimonides’ descendants in about 1375. Evidently, the codex was used as a model for copying Torah scrolls.

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