Some may recognize the title sofer as identifying someone who writes sacred scrolls—Torah, Mezuzah, Megillah, etc. The TalmudReferring to one of two collections, the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds, edited in the 6th century, that contains hundreds of years of commentary, discussion, and exploration of the ideas in the Mishnah. One could describe it as Mishnah + Gemara = Talmud Read more has a different definition for sofer (soferim in plural):
Therefore, because they devoted so much time to the Bible, the first Sages were called: Those who count [soferim], because they would count all the letters in the TorahRefers to the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh, also called the Five Books of Moses, Pentateuch or the Hebrew equivalent, Humash. This is also called the Written Torah. The term may also refer to teachings that expound on Jewish tradition. Read more, [and] they would say that the letter vav in the word “belly [gaḥon]” (Leviticus 11:42) is the midpoint of the letters in a Torah scroll. The words: “Diligently inquired [darosh darash]” (Leviticus 10:16), are the midpoint of the words in a Torah scroll. (Steinsaltz Translation via Sefaria) (Bavli Kiddushin 30a)
The sofer was a counter. Many words in Hebrew use the consonants s.p.r.—miSPaR – number, SiPuR – story, SePheR – scroll—to name three. The inseparability of precision (number), story, and book is a profound truth in Jewish tradition. Our Torah scrolls cannot be missing a single letter. It is part of the secret of our history.
The image of a person carefully going over every letter and word to the point of knowing the exact midpoint of a massive corpus expresses deep love for every letter’s preciousness. (The Torah has about 304,000 letters, not 600,000; that is a midrashThis word is used in two ways, as both a concept and a literature. As a concept, midrash is the expansive interpretation of biblical texts. The term is used to describe the practice of rabbinic interpretation. As a text, it refers to specific collections of interpretations, particularly from the third to ninth centuries in the Land of Israel and Babylonia. Plural: Midrashim
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According to these soferim, the parsha we read this week marks the midpoint of the words in the Torah. The two middle words of the Torah, darosh darash, tell us that Moses investigated an incident in the Tabernacle. However, the more profound significance reveals that the very heart of the Torah is calling out, saying, “Inquire! Investigate! Push! Learn!”
These two words in Hebrew, as written in the Torah, look identical: dalet reish shin d.r.sh. d.r.sh. (דָּרֹשׁ דָּרַשׁ). Those little dots under the letters, some people call vowels, or vocalization, allow us to pronounce Hebrew words, and the dots are never written in the Torah.
There is a lot more one could say about these texts and words. The most profound aspect here is the requirement of having someone to learn with and from. One cannot read the Torah without an accompanying text or a person who has the vowel signs. The fact that the root s.p.r. can be read as Sofer, Sefer, Sippur, etc. hints that at the very heart of Jewish identity, and I would argue human existence, is a requirement that we inquire, that we ask of the person next to us—tell me how to understand you better—what are the points I need to know to be able to read you.
