COMMENT ON ME BY ME

BS"D


I was unfairly portrayed - ok, slammed - by someone on another blog recently. Someone who doesn't know me, nor showed me the respect of contacting me & checking out what I stand for before they railed against me & my work. I'm not going to include a link to the tripe this person wrote, but below is the comment I left on their post. I hope it clarifies & dispells a few things:

Hi & thanks for all the very kind things you say about me, Shawn & Cipher.
Some clarification, folks:

This is a list of women who worked in sofrut throughout our history. Some of the information I've come across is anecdotal & some is a matter of historical record. I wouldn't call them "Orthodox" per se, as I'm not a revisionist, but I'll say that none of these women belonged to a non-Halakhic movement.

Although I do learn & teach midrash & some Kabbalah on the otiyot, I don't claim to be "a Kabbalist".

Of the 4 seminaries I learned in, one told me that if I did not reveal the name, address & phone number of my sofer & tell them what his car looked like, I would have to leave the yeshivah. So I left.

I was trained by 2 sofrim, one was R' Dov Laimon (a Bostoner Chasid) & the other is Centrist Orthodox who learned his craft in Me'a Shearim & wishes to remain out of the spotlight until further notice.

My rabbi is R' Ross Singer, who is responsible for the tshuvah showing that it is the majority opinion that women can write Megilot Esther & that men who leyn from it or hear the leyning from it have fulfilled their obligation on Purim.

I attend Orthodox shul. My committment is to normative Orthodox Jewish practice, which I carry into my sofrut. I could go on, however, all the questions I see asked here can be answered by visiting my blog, so I invite you to do so.

I may visit this blog off & on, but I don't plan to follow up on this thread, so if you'd like to engage in respectful discussion, we can do that either on e-mail or at my blog.

Brakhhot to you all.

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