Cursive hebrew (mostly) and not becoming a Sofer

Learning to read and draw Hebrew letters is a challenge. My initial attempts to copy an alphabet were soon thwarted by my unwillingness to be bound or restrained by the strict laws governing the formal writing of letters. I am not destined to be a Sofer (Jewish scribe). Nevertheless, the letter forms and language remain fascinating. The four abstract drawings here are based on my practice pieces. The first (above) presents a conundrum: while creating a satisfying abstract design, I didn't realize until I was 'finished' that the letters were upside down! This begs the question: how is the reader of Hebrew going to interpret this? Do tell me.

Seeking a more lyrical solution I made a number of composite drawings using a broad brush and nib pen. Again it is the word בְּרֵאשִׁית‎, (Bereshit) meaning Genesis, or 'in the beginning'.

Then I turned to the cursive alphabet that had first confused me. Here I felt there was more freedom for creating adventurous designs. Which, if any of these pieces will be included in my interpretation of Carlyle's Sartor Resartus & Heroes, remains to be seen . . .

בְּרֵאשִׁית

'In the beginning', and, 'Genesis'.

In On heroes, hero-worship and the heroic in history Thomas Carlyle makes several references to the 'divine . . .' and 'sacred Hebrew Book'. In Sartor Resartus he refers to 'young Ishmael' in the 'destitution of the wild desert'. Throughout both books he includes many biblical references and allusions. For my illustrations, I looked for a quotation, and then searched for an original source – and I found Hebrew texts.

The history, meaning and beauty of the letterforms are fascinating and I began to draw and learn a little of the Alephbet. The first problem I encountered was the inability of Microsoft Word and Adobe InDesign to render the text as right to left (RTL) reading. Curiously my Firefox browser, Apple Mail and TextEdit did work, which helped when using the Hebrew keyboard layout.

Secondly, my insatiable thirst for language was hampered by a new alphabet and the myriad forms it takes. Besides the formal pen or brush-drawn block lettering based on a square of three kulmusim that follows strict laws concerning how it must be written, there are the usual variety of modern seriffed and sans-seriffed fonts, a manual print form and a cursive script used for handwriting.

Learning to recognize the various letter forms and their sound is a challenge and the following Web site has proved very useful: http://www.hebrew4christians.com/index.html. Here you can listen to the sounds of individual letters and how they sound together as words and in sentences such as this blessing upon smelling fragrant fruit:

Barukh attah Adonai eloheinu melekh ha-olam, ha-noten re-ach tov bapperot.

The calligraphy is just that, a beginning – let me know what you think, am I breaking rules?