Parashah - Spacing Techniques

Spacing Techniques

In most modern Torah scrolls and Jewish editions of the Bible, there are two types of parashot, an "open portion" (parashah petuhah) and a "closed portion" (parashah setumah). An "open portion" is roughly similar to a modern paragraph: The text of the previous portion ends before the end of the column (leaving a space at the end of the line), and the new "open" portion starts at the beginning of the next line (but with no indentation). A "closed portion", on the other hand, leaves a space in the middle of the line of text, where the previous portion ends before the space, and the next portion starts after it, towards the end of the line of text.

An "open portion" (petuhah) is often abbreviated with the Hebrew letter "פ" (peh), and a "closed portion" (setumah) with the Hebrew letter "ס" (samekh). Rough English equivalents are "P" and "S" respectively.

In masoretic codices and in medieval scrolls, these two spacing techniques allowed for a larger range of options:

• An "open portion" always started at the beginning of a new line. This could happen the way described above, but also by leaving a blank line between the two portions, thus allowing the previous portion to sometimes entirely fill its last line of text.
• A "closed portion" never began at the beginning of a line. This could happen as in modern scrolls (a space in the middle of a line), but also by the previous portion ending before the end of the line, and the new portion beginning on the next line after an indentation.

Most printed Hebrew bibles today represent the parashot using the more limited techniques found in typical modern Torah scrolls: A space in the middle of a line for a closed portion, and beginning at the start of the next line for an open portion (not a blank line). A notable exception is The Jerusalem Crown (The Bible of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2000), whose typography and layout is fashioned after the Aleppo codex, and follows the medieval spacing techniques for parashah divisions by leaving an empty line for {P} and starts {S} on a new line with an indentation.

Medieval Ashkenazic sources beginning with the Mahzor Vitry also refer to a third spacing technique called a parashah sedurah. This involved starting a new parashah at the same point in the line where the previous parashah ended on the line above.