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Atag (Aramaic:תאג, pluraltagin,תאגין) is a decoration drawn over someHebrew letters in the Jewish scrolls ofSifrei Kodesh,Tefillin andMezuzot. The Hebrew name for thisscribal feature iskether (כתר).Tag andkether mean 'crown' inAramaic andHebrew respectively.
In modern practice, the lettersBeth,Daleth,He,Heth,Yud andQuf (mnemonic: BeDeQ-ChaYaHבדק חיה) have one tag. The lettersGimel,Zayin,Tet,Nun,Ayin,Tzadi andShin (mnemonic: Sha´ATNeZ-GaTzשעטנז גץ), as far back as Talmudic times, have 3 tags.[1] Some manuscripts feature embellishedtagin on the top line of each column and some also on all occurrences of theTetragrammaton other than those prefixed with alamed.
About the 2nd century CE, a work calledSefer Tagin (ספר תאגין orספר תאגי) emerged attributed toRabbi Akiva which laid out the 1960 places where modified tagin or letter forms occur in aTorah scroll. In it, the locations of letters which receive a number of tagin which differs from thesha'atnez gatz tradition, e.g. the initialbeit ofbereshith inGenesis 1:1 having 4 tagin as opposed to the usual 1 and the instances of aleph which bear 7 tagin apiece.[2] According to this work, each occurrence of each letter is to be written with between 0 and 7 tagin, as delineated in the lists contained therein.[3]
This tradition, predating the versification of the Torah text, contains some instruction wherein it is difficult to know what verses are being referenced, thus in the 12th century,Maimonides ruled that though a scribe should do his utmost to incorporate all of the elements of this tradition, calledotiyyot meshunot (strange letters), however if they are omitted, whether in full or in part, the scroll would not be ruled aspasul (invalid).[4][clarification needed]
In a notable sugya, in whichMoses sees Rabbi Akiva (Menachot 29b), a story in the BabylonianTalmud states thattagin were originally added to the text by God atMount Sinai, and thatRabbi Akiva would use their presence in order to derive numerous laws bymidrash (rabbinic exegesis).[5]
Inkabbalistic thought, eachtag has special significance and meaning.[6]
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| Ktav Stam | ||
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