[Avodah] Writing God's name

[Micha Berger]

On Fri, Jun 05, 2009 at 09:05:12AM +1000, Motti Yarchinai wrote:
: Then (to return to the topic), another solution occurred to me: There 
: is a very old printers' device, that has had something of a revival 
: in modern fonts. A ligature consisting of the right half of an alef 
: combined with a slightly deformed lamed on the left and merged into a 
: single character...

And in kesav Rashi they would use an upside-down pei peshutah to
simulate it.

...
: I don't really know for sure, but I am guessing that, halachically 
: (in the laws of safrut), if that character is used on its own (to 
: represent either the Hebrew word for "to" or the noun "God"), it is 
: not a legal word because it does not contain either a properly formed 
: aleph or a proper;y formed lamed of the required form.

It was only used for the noun "G-d" or as it appears within a word -- eg
"Yisrael". The ligature was invented to be a kinui, much like the two
yuds, yud smitchik, or the triagle of yuds that it got elaborated into
(but evaporated centuries ago).

This raises a question about how qinuyim become sheimos. On 8-Dec-1996,
RAM asked mail-jewish
<http://ottmall.com/mj_ht_arch/v25/mj_v25i40.html#CKT> about taking a text
with the double-yud kinui into the bathroom, and I didn't see an answer.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

PS for those who left MJ during its silence from Oct 6 until a month ago,
it's back up. As hakaras hatov to the large portion of Avodah that was
once mj-machshava, I wanted to let the chevrah know. Moderating Avodah has
meant that I lost the time to follow anything but A/A and scjm (which I
read to stay connected to where our non-frum brothers are holding). So, I
myself didn't notice until checking its archives for the discussion there.

-- 
Micha Berger             One doesn't learn mussar to be a tzaddik,
micha at aishdas.org        but to become a tzaddik.
http://www.aishdas.org                         - Rav Yisrael Salanter
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