Symmetrically Designed Sifrei Torah: A Quantitative Analysis - Hakirah

Symmetrically Designed Sifrei Torah: A Quantitative Analysis : 191
בתוך הדף--אם יכול לכתוב חצייה בתוך הדף וחצייה חוץ לדף,‏
ואם לאו,‏ מניח המקום פנוי ומתחיל מתחילת השיטה
כותב;‏
Since there are no words in the Torah that have more than 10
letters but there are words that take up more than 10 spaces, R’
Kaminetsky concludes that Rambam must be referring to spaces, not
words. R’ Kaminetsky considers the יוד the smallest unit of horizontal
width, and offers a width measurement for each letter in terms of the
standard yud. The details of this approach are given in the 3 rd and 4 th
columns of Appendix A. In this scheme, the total amount of needed
space is the equivalent of 576,442 yud’s. A slight variation of the
letter-yud relationship could make this number closer to 600,000.
Answer 2:
(RA) - Use the Number of Letters in the Spelling of the אברהם אזולאי
‏.אלף counts for 3 since it is spelled א Letter. For example, the letter
The 5 th and 6 th columns of Appendix A give the associations and final
numbers based on the spelling of the letters as given in the Zohar.
The final answer of 803,401 is considerably off the mark. 38
המקרא והמסורה 38 The details of this technique are given by R’ Margalioth in
(p. 41). R’ Azulei’s grandson, the ‏,חידא said he could not get his
grandfather’s solution to work. What we have presented here is really a
modification of his solution. Based on his spellings, the final answer
would be 2,043,781, far worse than our result. One other variation of
the first 2 solutions is given by the רא״ם (see המקרא והמסורה page 43),
who notes that many letters are combinations of other letters. For each
letter he suggests you use the number of letters contained in its written
form. E.g.:
א
is made of 3 distinct letters: an upper yud, a lower yud, and a body like a
vov. It would then be counted as 3. R’ Uri Dasberg uses a similar
scheme (see ) and
comes up with “only” 539,996 letters. He adds 59,951 because of endof-word
letters that are of a special form (i.e. mem, nun, tzadi, peh, chaf)
and a final 53 by including the specially marked letters in the Torah, i.e.
32 letters that have dots over them, 10 large letters, 6 small letters, and