book

Distinctions

sefer (ספר)

The generic term, used of the twenty-four books (though some are called a megillah), of a Sefer Torah, and of legal documents (the Mishnah, Yevamos 15:3, calls a kesubah a sefer kesubah). Moshe's plea after the eigel is the column's opening case: erase me from Your sefer that You wrote (Shemos 32:32), where the word is a book or written document plainly.

Rabbi Elimelech of Lizhensk: sefer is from sfar, a border, since as a border guards a country by making one clear it to enter, the Torah guards Klal Yisrael in their closeness to Hashem. Rabbi Moshe Shapiro takes the whole ס-פ-ר family as unifying disparate parts: sippur joins details into one narrative, sfar binds a territory into one polity, mispar and sofer bind numbers into one ordered system, and a sefer binds all it contains into one entity, and this holds of books in general and not only sifrei kodesh. Professor Raymond P. Dougherty of Yale wrote to explain how sefer grows out of the core sense "to count": counting is a mental act, memory is unreliable, so one falls back on a written tally, and from there sofer comes to mean scribe and sefer a record, a letter, a book. Avodah Zarah 24b notes that the Persian for sefer is dvir, which is how it explains the city Dvir being renamed Kiryas Sefer (Shoftim 1:11).

megillah (מגילה)

Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim traces it to the biliteral ג-ל, round, with gal (a heap), golel (to roll), galgal (wheel), gulgoles (skull), and magal (sickle): a megillah is sheets of parchment sewn together and rolled up. He puts gilayon here too, a single sheet written on and rolled, whence the blank margins of a document and then the glosses written in them.

Rabbi Shmuel Strashun notices that when Bava Basra 14b lists the books of Tanach, it says Sefer Tehillim and Megillas Esther and uses neither word for any of the other twenty-two. He postulates that sefer of Tehillim marks its affinity to the Chumash, which is likewise divided into five and whose verse count is comparable (see Kiddushin 30a); and megillah of Esther as marking the requirement that the Esther read on Purim be written on its own scroll and not one containing other books (Radak to Yirmiyahu 36:1; Megillah 19a). Unqualified megillah in rabbinic literature means Esther, and the berachah is al mikra megillah. Rabbi Shmuel Strashun therefore finds Maseches Sofrim 14:3 difficult, since it has that berachah recited over any of the five megillos; the Vilna Gaon (Biur HaGra to Orach Chaim 490) nonetheless adopts that practice, still followed in many communities in Eretz Yisrael.

The claim that a sefer rolls on two wooden pins and a megillah on one is untraced: Rabbi Klein reports that he understood the difference that way from childhood, that he later looked for a source and came up empty-handed, and that he would welcome one. Do not repeat it as though it were an established distinction.

iggeret (אגרת)

Esther calls itself an iggeret (Esther 9:26-29), and Shmuel (Megillah 7a) holds it "was said to be read, not said to be written." Iggeres and its variations appear only in the later, post-Exilic books, Esther, Ezra and Nechemiah, and Divrei HaYamim II. Professor Avi Hurvitz builds on exactly that: he takes iggeret and sefer as synonyms, both meaning "letter," and holds that the choice between them reflects nothing but the stage of the language, sefer the older variant and iggeret the later one.

Rabbi Dr. Jose Faur proffers a different account, from Divrei HaYamim II 30:6, where Chizkiyahu sends runners with igros calling for teshuvah: an iggeret is a government decision publicized aloud by a royal herald reciting from a written memorandum, with no copies released to the public, which is exactly "said to be read, not said to be written," whereas a sefer is an officially published work from which copies may be made. He notes that a herald would unfold the whole scroll before reading, and that an iggeret would not be read with the taamim; from which he concludes that reading Esther today, with the taamim but with the scroll first unfolded entire, is a synthesis or compromise of iggeret and sefer.

Ritva distinguishes shtar from iggeret by durability: a shtar is written to last, ostensibly so as to serve as evidence of what it records, while an iggeret is not. Rabbi Yosef Dov Soloveitchik applies the same sort of axis to sefer against iggeret (see Yirmiyahu 32:14), though without quoting Ritva directly, and uses it to explain Megillah 19a, where Rav holds that although Esther is called an iggeret, which would allow sewing its sheets with linen thread, since it is also called a sefer it must be sewn with sinews, the more lasting material. (Against this, Sotah 13a uses iggeret for a document attesting a sale, which is closer to a shtar.)

In Mishnaic Hebrew iggeret typically means a writ issued by a beis din: a get (Gittin 6:5, and Gittin 9:3 gives sefer teiruchin, iggeres shevukin and get pitturin as synonyms), an iggeres mered issued against a wife who refuses her wifely duties (Yevamos 64a), an iggeres bikores announcing intent to sell property (Kesubos 11:5). It also covers halachic letters sent from Eretz Yisrael to Bavel by Ravin (Kesubos 49b, Bava Metzia 114a and 139a, Niddah 68a; see also Shabbos 115a, Bava Basra 41b, Sanhedrin 29a), and Shabbos 19a speaks of sending an iggeret by post.

On etymology the authorities split. Rabbeinu Tam (in Tosafos to Kesubos 100b): an iggeret is a document issued by one beis din to be sent to another. In line with that, Rabbi Moshe Chaim Leiter of Kiryat Sefer suggests it may derive from ג-ר, temporary residence, since a document written to be sent elsewhere has only a short-lived first home; Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim offers a similar understanding, a document moved about a province so as to publicize its contents thoroughly, which the column notes is closer still to Rabbi Faur. Rabbi Shlomo Aharon Wertheimer derives it instead from agur, a collection stored long term, so an iggeret is a document meant to be preserved, which on the surface, the column says, seems to contradict Rabbi Faur and Rabbi Soloveitchik.

Malbim's summary is the compact one to hold: an iggeret is a document between two parties; a sefer tells (mesaper) about a subject; a megillah is written to be rolled (golel); a gilayon is written to be revealed (gilui) and not rolled or folded; ksav is anything written.

machzor (מחזור) and kuntres (קונטרס)

In early medieval sources a Tanach codex is a machzor and sefer means the scroll. The name is from ח-ז-ר, to return, since one can return to a codex's beginning at once, unlike a scroll that must be rolled from one end to the other. The other medieval word for a codex was mitzchaf, apparently borrowed from the Arabic mishaf; it fell out of use, and machzor came to mean the yom tov siddur, now recalling the returning cycle of the year's chagim.

A kuntres, often rendered "notebook," is in current speech a short treatise not weighty enough to stand as its own sefer; the Tosafists call Rashi's Gemara commentary the kuntres, and though Rashi does not use the word of his own work he uses it of his rebbi's commentary (to Gittin 82a). Rabbi Binyamin Mussafia, Rabbi Ernest Klein and Rabbi Daniel Sperber derive it from the Greek commentaries, so the column has it, Rabbi Sperber explaining the term from the records of the public register that documented official government acts; Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur (Sefer HaTishbi) derives it instead from the Latin quinternus, a quire of five sheets of paper.

Rendering guidance

• Esther: keep each name where the source uses it. "The Megillah" for the Purim reading, "the Book of Esther" where the pasuk-count or canon is at issue, and "letter" only where the pasuk itself says iggeret (Esther 9:26-29) or where the sugya turns on it (Megillah 19a).
• Trap: English "book" absorbs sefer and megillah, and "letter" absorbs iggeret, shtar, and get. In a halachic passage leave shtar, get, and kuntres transliterated; only iggeret is safely "letter."
• Sefer in a citation of a title (Sefer HaShorashim, Sefer Tehillim) stays transliterated as part of the name; sefer as a common noun in a frum English text stays "sefer," not "book," where the reference is to a work of Torah.
• Gilayon is "sheet" in Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim's sense, "margin" in the later sense, and "gloss" where it names a commentary printed there. Pick from the context; the three are a chain, not synonyms.
• Machzor needs a gloss the first time it appears in a medieval context, since a modern reader hears the yom tov siddur and the source means a codex.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Between Books and Scrolls," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 18 Adar I 5782 (2022-02-19): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/9581-between-books-and-scrolls.md. Primary loci cited: Shemos 32:32 (the article prints Ex. 33:32); Shoftim 1:11; Yirmiyahu 32:14 and 36:1 with Radak; Esther 9:26-29; Divrei HaYamim II 30:6; Mishnah Yevamos 15:3, Gittin 6:5 and 9:3, Kesubos 11:5; Bava Basra 14b and 41b; Kiddushin 30a; Megillah 7a and 19a; Yevamos 64a; Kesubos 49b and 100b with Tosafos; Bava Metzia 114a, 139a; Niddah 68a; Shabbos 19a, 115a; Sanhedrin 29a; Sotah 13a; Avodah Zarah 24b; Gittin 82a with Rashi; Maseches Sofrim 14:3 with Biur HaGra to Orach Chaim 490; Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim on biliteral ג-ל; Sefer HaTishbi. Dougherty's remark is paraphrased rather than quoted. The article calls commentaries a Greek word, and describes the kuntres etymology that way here; it also refers the reader, for get against shtar, to its earlier essay "Divorce Bills and other Documents" (May 2020), which is not used here.