http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...em=300250386898

isnt it more possible this is a Hamburger Sephardi torah?

It reminds me of a pashkevil I once saw in Israel:

הכנסת
ספר תורה שניצל
מהשואה

whats a pashkevil? on a related note is something like http://cgi.ebay.com/KOSHER-ASHKENAZ-GERMAN...1QQcmdZViewItem this truly kasher, i mean are those flower thingies allowed? 10 Gs for a kosher torah is very reasonable

i meant the hamburg sephardim

First of all, the "Ashkenazi Torah" is probably not Ashkenazi. Second (secondly is not a word), those "flower thingies" are allowed. In fact, it's one of the more benign features of old sifrei torah. There's an entire ghost mesorah as to where to put special tagim and which letters to draw in interesting shapes.

Look at some of the פs here. http://hydepark.hevre.co.il/topic.asp?topi...;forum_id=20067
Also look at Torah Sheleimah to the beginning of Vayikra.
Machzor Vitry also has a list of oddly formed letters.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/secondly

mosheshmeal
.

what means you by ghost mesorah? also i too think that torah is probably (If in fact of German origin) probably from Hamburg Sephardi community(Spanish-portuguese).
they where mostly killds in the Shoa

Fine. "Secondly as used as an ordinal number" is not a word.


It's probably not of German origin. If it is, great. Who cares? There were Sephardim in Germany, we knew that already.
Ghost mesorah meaning mesorah which was lost.

In general many German sifrei Torah, especially from before the 19th century were written with a completely different ksav (a bit similar to velish in some ways and a bit similar to beis yosef in some others) and unusual letters and adorments were quite common.

there is an italian script which intermediate, ive also seen some chassidic scrolls with sephardi looking shins!

With the exception, I believe, of Holland, all Spanish and Portuguese sifre Torah were wrapped in mantles instead of being enclosed in a tik. When a Western Sepharade keillah has a scroll in a Tik, it's usually one that has been donated and/or rescued (K"K Mikveh Israel has a few of these).

This isn't a sefer Torah -megillos are sometimes written with a slightly different ksav, even today. The fact is that historically people did thing to megillos they would never dream of doing to sifrei Torah, such as illuminating them, for instance.

This particular megillah actually seems to have no distinguishing features at all, like starting each column with המלך or those delightful crowns.It has no unusual adornments and is not written in anything resembling Welsh's script, but a script similar to Bais Yoseph which can be seen in dozens of manuscript machzorim, siddurim, and haggados. All in all, I'm not really sure what the picture is supposed to demonstrate, other than an ineptitude at identifying Sifrei Tanach.

I realize this is a megillah, but I've seen sifrei torah for sale on e-bay written with the same ksav. This is the only example of that "old german ksav" that I could find online now.

Some of the letters are different from both beis yosef and velish. For instance look at the top part of the aleph- exact reverse of beis yosef. The mem is also different-look at the bottom left.

OK. So?

Morrocan torahs as well, are with a mantle


im told turkish torahs where as well in the old days, so pretty much all sephardi torahs where