| The Portion of Shemini Preserving the Tradition of Writing a Sefer Torah Following the seven days of preparation during which Moses trained Aaron and his sons on the proper procedure for offering the sacrifices in the Tabernacle, Aaron is called upon to begin with the sacrifice of his own sin offering. Two mishaps occur at the beginning of the service in the Tabernacle. The first involves two of Aaron's sons, Nadav and Avihu, who offered a "strange fire" on the altar. G-d responded quickly: "And fire went forth from before the Lord and consumed them"(Leviticus 10;2). The second mishap occurs when the sin offering is consumed by fire which angers Moses: "And Moses thoroughly investigated concerning the sin offering he goat, and behold, it had been burnt! (Leviticus 10;16). The words "darosh darash" (thoroughly investigated) are written in the Torah accordingly: the first word at the end of a line and the second word at the beginning of the next line. This marks the middle of the Torah in terms of words, as per the Talmud in Tractate Kiddushin (30a). There is also an addition to the letters "reish" in both words. (Rokeiach on the Torah) In this way our sages succeeded in preserving the exact tradition of Sifrei Torah throughout history and throughout the world. It should be noted that if one counts the number of words, one does not get to the middle of the Torah. The intent of the Talmudic statement refers to the amount of "double words" as in "darosh darash" or "haremesh haromes" (Genesis 1;26)", "shiva shiva (Genesis 7;2), etc. There are 89 "double words" in the Torah. "Darosh darash" is number 45- 44 before these words and 44 after these words. See the attached list.
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