Symmetrically Designed Sifrei Torah: A Quantitative Analysis - Hakirah

214 : Hạkirah, the Flatbush Journal of Jewish Law and Thought
about 24 letters from the exact page center, considering our lack of
expertise in yud’s and vav’s, and, as explained, not every page has
exactly 2400 letters, it is close enough that when laying out the S”T
the vav of gachon may very well be the center letter on the page.
Because of the positioning of the vav of gachon on the page, and the
fact that the total number of pages is only one less than it is for the
S”T designed to have 46 verses per page, we feel strongly that Case 2
is the one the soferim targeted, 69 since in that case the actual middle
and the one the Gemara gives are both directly in the middle of a
page, albeit 2 pages apart.
Dividing the S”T into Pages with an Equal Number of
Words
The results of a similar spreadsheet analysis done this time to
investigate the viability of designing a S”T with an equal number of
words per page are given in Table 8.
Case
Table 8
Scenarios for an Equal-Number-of-Words-Per-Page S”T
דרש דרש
Page
Actual
Middle
Word
Page
Location
Total #
Of Words
Total #
of Pages
Words
Per Page Location
1 79,981 121 661 61.91 60.50
2 79,980 124 645 63.45 67.00
3 79,980 129 620 66.00 64.50
In comparing the 3 scenarios of Table 8, the only one that
has דרש דרש in a distinctive position on a page is Case 3, where they
69 It is additionally appropriate that in the case of the middle letter the
S”T have an odd number of pages. In this way the vav of gachon can
possibly be in the exact middle of the page. If, however, the total
number of pages were even, there is no way that a vav in the middle of a
word can be the first letter on a page.