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Monograph on the mitzvah to write a Sefer Torah. It is regarded as a positive biblical commandment for every Jew to possess a Sefer Torah, the word "song" in Deuteronomy 31:19, "now therefore write ye this song for you," being interpreted to apply to the Torah as a whole. Even if he has inherited one from his father he is still obliged to have one of his own (Sanh. 21b). He may write it himself, or have it written on his behalf by a sofer, or purchase one, but "he who writes it himself is regarded as though it had been given to him on Mt. Sinai" (Men. 30a). Mitzvah Taryag is a study and analysis of the precept that every man should write his own Sefer Torah.
R. Hayyim Judah ben Kalonymus Ehrenreich, (1887–1942) served as rabbi of Holesov, Moravia; Deva, Transylvania; and Humenne, Slovakia. In this last community, to which he was appointed in 1930, he devoted himself to a study of talmudic literature. R. Ehrenreich planned a scientific edition of the Babylonian Talmud together with a new commentary of his own, and a similar one of the Jerusalem Talmud, but nothing was published. Immersed in this scholarly activity, he hardly engaged in communal activity, but in 1920 published an important pamphlet Yisrael bein ha-Amim ("Israel Among the Nations") dealing with Jewish survival. His works include Rav Saadiah Gaon's Shelosh Esreh Middot (1922); Sefer ha-Pardes (1924); parts of Sefer Abudarham (1927); R. Abraham Klausner's Minhagim (1929); and Givat ha-Moreh (1936), sermons. From 1920 he published parts of Seder Rav Amram Ga'on with his own commentary and edited a monthly journal, Ozar ha-Hayyim, from 1924–38. He and his family were killed by the Nazis in Lublin in 1942. |
