I’ve had 2 recent experiences that I want to share to drive this point home.

We recently began dealing with a young, very fine sofer. He provides us with mezuzahs that have already been through 1 manual exam. As is our policy, we checked them again, as 2 sets of expert eyes is critical to ensure kashrus (and level of kashrus). (This is besides the computer checking for textual errors.) To our surprise, we had to return most of them due to a problem with 1-2 letters per mezuzah (Lamed) that made them kosher bedieved. How is it that an examiner can regularly check mezuzahs for a sofer and return them with no comment, as if they are just fine? The sofer didn’t realize that he had an issue, which sometimes happens when the problem isn’t brought to their attention. I had to tell the sofer to specify with his examiner that he check the mezuzahs so that they will be mehudar.

I recently checked tefillin belonging to a rav of a shul. He had them checked 1-2 times years ago. Upon checking I found a problem that made the parshios shel rosh bedieved that had been overlooked from the outset. Why didn’t the previous examiners point this out to, at that time, a young ben Torah? Now this close to 60 year old rav had to find out after all these years that he has been wearing bedieved tefillin!

It is critical that the sofer, who I suggested also check the batim and retzuos, be a batim expert as well. The halachos and practical melacha of batim assembly and repair are not part of the safrus certification process. This is a separate field and to become an expert one must learn the halachos and melacha from a batim expert (and sifrei halacha).

When making your choice of who to have check your tefillin, make sure the sofer is a batim expert or that he has an expert on staff or plan to have the sofer check the parshios and the batim expert to handle the opening of the tefillin, review of the batim and the assembly.

If a visiting checking campaign provides expert batim services, which are not available locally, then this would be a good reason to take advantage of their services. Minimally, even if you are not due for an internal exam, you should have an expert review the outside of the batim.

I also need to clarify that one who is a sofer is not necessarily qualified to check. Checking requires considerably more knowledge than to write and most importantly, checking minimally requires months of training under an expert examiner or posek. It is imperative to verify that the sofer is also qualified (and certified) to check.