prof. dr. Andries E. Brouwer: Special letters
...and the gecko, and the land-crocodile, and the lizard, and the sand-lizard, and the chameleon.
This large Lamed was not approved by "Midrash Rabah Aqim", but was added later by some Kabbalist rabbis.
The second enlarged letter is found in Vayiqra/Leviticus 11:42 - the large Vav in gachOn, "belly".
The Middle Verse of the Torah
In the Babylonian Talmud, Kiddushin 30a, there are two sources which discuss different aspects of the text of the Tanakh. The first source relates to the middle verse of a number of sections of the Tanakh.
׳לפיכך נקראו ראשונים סופרים – שהיו סופרים כל האותיות שבתורה, שהיו אומרים: וא”ו דגחון (ויקרא יא:מב) – חציין של אותיות של ס”ת, דרש דרש (ויקרא י:טז)- חציין של תיבות, והתגלח (ויקרא יג:לג)- של פסוקים, יכרסמנה חזיר מיער (תהלים פ:יד)- עי”ן דיער חציין של תהלים, והוא רחום יכפר עון (תהלים עח:לח)- חציו דפסוקים
Therefore the ancients were called Scribes because they counted all the letters in the Torah. They said that the “vav” in גחון (Lev. 11:42) was the middle letter of the Torah, that דרש דרש/”And Moses diligently inquired” (Lev. 10:16) was the middle word of the Torah, that “then he shall be shaven” (Lev. 13:33) is the middle verse of the Torah, that the “ayin” of “יכרסמנה חזיר מיער” (Psalms 80:14) is the middle of Psalms, and that “But He, being full of compassion, forgiveth iniquity, and destroyeth not” (Psalms 78:38), is the middle verse of Psalms.
The comment in Masoret ha-Shas alerts the reader to a potential difficulty.
חדוש גדול כי בכל חומש וכן בתקונים המדויקים בפ’ צו סי’ ח’ סוף פסוק ז’ ויאפד לו בו נדפס על צדו חצי התורה בפסוקים
This is a big innovation, because in every chumash and in the reliable tikkunim in Parashat Tzav chap. 8, the end of verse 7, “And he put upon him the tunic”, it is printed in the margin “half the Torah in verses”.
According to the Talmud the middle verse of the Torah is Lev. 13:33, while according to the counting accepted today which is based upon the Masorah, the middle verse is Lev. 8:7. Not only do the Babylonian Talmud and the Masorah disagree, but there is a third tradition. In Massechet Soferim 9:2 the middle verse of the Torah is said to be “וישחט”. M. Higger in his edition of Soferim isn’t sure as to which verse this is referring. The possibilities that he gives are Lev. 8:15, 19, 23; 9:8, 12, 18. The Minchat Shai is understandably perplexed at the situation, concluding the we must wait for Elijah the Prophet to come sort things out (see his comments on Lev. 8:8). As modern scholars of the Masorah have shown, there were different traditions of the division of the Tanakh into verses. C.D. Ginsburg has said that “In the division of the verses, however, as is the case with other features of the Hebrew text, the different Schools had different traditions”. (Introduction, p. 69)
Bibliography:
Ludwig Blau, “Masoretic Studies, III-IV”, JQR 9 (1897) 122-144, 471-490; C.D. Ginsburg, Introduction to the Massoretico-Critical Edition of the Hebrew Bible; Jordan Penkower, “Verse Divisions in the Hebrew Bible”, VT 50 (3) 79-393; Emmanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, pp. 50-53.
"God summoned Moses and He spoke with him from the Tent of Meeting, saying..." (Leviticus 1:1).
The first word of this week's portion, itself the first portion in the third book of the Torah, is VAYIKRa: "summoned." That's not a typographical error; the letter aleph at the end of the Hebrew word is intentionally written in miniature in a Torah scroll (and usually in print as well). This is sufficiently unusual to raise the question: why?
First, a brief digression into Hebrew script. The Hebrew alphabet in its current form has been around for 2,500 years, having returned with the Jews from the Babylonian exile (where it was used for Aramaic) and replacing the "Phoenician" alphabet that had been in use throughout the First Temple period. The written alphabet does not distinguish between regular-sized and "capital" letters—hence, for instance, the recurrent difficulty in deciphering proper nouns (as in names and titles). In a Torah scroll, however, occasionally one finds some characters enlarged; an example is the letter vav in the word gahOn (Leviticus 11:42), which, according to scribal tradition, marks the exact midpoint of the Torah.
If letters are enlarged to call attention to them, it is reasonable to suppose that they would be shrunk to deflect attention from them. That appears to be the case with VAYIKRa. Rabbi Jacob ben Asher (Germany and Spain; 1269-1343), in a Torah commentary that devotes exceptional attention to Hebrew orthography, speculates as to the reason. Basing himself on the fact that Moses himself was writing the scroll at God's dictation, he notes:
Being truly humble, Moses desired to write VAYIKR, which signifies happenstance (mikreh) . . . as though God had appeared to him [of all people] only by chance. God then ordered him to add the aleph; but Moses, out of humility, agreed to write it only in miniature.
The miniaturization of the aleph, according to this interpretation, was thus deliberate, representing Moses' determination to shift attention away from his personal accomplishments and diminish his exceptional status.
Where have we encountered this determination before?
At the height of the crisis over the golden calf, God, in righteous indignation, says to Moses: "Now, just leave Me be; I will destroy them and make you into a great nation" (Exodus 32:10). Moses successfully entreats Him to relent. Still, it must have been a heady moment for Moses, inevitably reminiscent of God's great promise to Abraham: "I shall make you a great nation" (Genesis 12:2). And then there were the rays of light emanating from his face, surely an ego-enhancing experience if ever there was one. How could even Moses fail to swell with self-pride at the visible evidence of such preeminence? Yet we found him deliberately obscuring his radiance with a veil.
A more homiletical approach, borrowing the terms of Freudian psychology, might note that the Hebrew word for "I," anokhi, begins with the letter aleph. Visually, then, a healthy ego might be signified by an ordinary aleph, an inflated ego by a large ("majuscule") aleph—and an ego that has been held in check by a miniature aleph. Any ordinary person would be entitled to consider even a solitary summons from God as license to bask in his exceptionality; Moses, despite being summoned regularly to the divine presence, was exceptional precisely in shunning the temptation.
Many may be called, few may be chosen, and fewer still have the strength of character to divert undue recognition for their service. If we ponder how, later on, God could have instructed Moses to write that "the man Moses was the most humble on the face of the earth" (Numbers 12:3) without forcing him to contravene the very quality being celebrated, the miniature aleph give us a clue to Moses' ingenious solution.
Een verminkte letter
Vreemde letters: Vayikra
Het nest van de zwaluw