Author Topic: The Mystery of the Small Alef and other Secrets of Vayikra (Read 2589 times)

muman613 · « **on:** March 27, 2012, 03:08:32 AM »

I have wanted to post this for several days but have not had the chance to sit down and compose it. Here are some ideas which I learned last Shabbat when we read Parasha Vayikra...

Throughout the Torah there are secrets which are encoded into the very letters which compose the words. Every Torah must be written by a scribe who has learned the art of writing Holy Seferim often called STaM {which is an acronym for Sofer, Tefillin, Mezzuzah}. Part of the art of writing Torah scrolls is knowing how to write special letters. There are some letters in the Torah which are written smaller than normal and others which are written larger than others, and then there are special letters which may have a mark above, and other times words are spelled with missing letters or other times with extra letters.

In Vayikra the first word is Vayikra which is written with a small Aleph. The word means 'And he called' a part of the sentence 'And he called to Moshe'. What is learned by this? The sages have explained this small Aleph to indicate that Moshe was so humble that he did not want the word to mean that Hashem called to Moses but rather to mean that Hashem happened upon Moses.

Here this concept is explained by Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair of Ohr Yeshiva:

Quote

http://ohr.edu/3429

A little humility goes a long way.

If you look at a Torah Scroll you will see that the first word of the Book of Vayikra (Leviticus) is written in an unusual fashion. The last letter of Vayikra — the aleph — is written much smaller than the rest of the word.

Why is the aleph small?

When G-d told Moshe to write the word Vayikra “And He called”, Moshe didn’t want to write that last aleph.It seemed to Moshe that it gave him too much importance.How could he write that G-d called to him?Who was he, after all? A mere man. Moshe would have preferred to write Vayikar — “And He happened (upon him).”In other words G-d just “came across” Moshe, He didn’t “go out of His way” to appear to him.

In spite of Moshe’s protestations, G-d told him to write Vayikra — “And He called”.Moshe put the aleph at the end of the word as G-d had commanded him — but he wrote it small.

What’s in a small aleph?

The aleph is the letter that represents the will, the ego. It is the first letter of the word for “I” — ‘Ani’. When a person sees himself as the Big A, the Big Aleph, Number One, he is usurping the crown of He who is One.

When a person sees himself as no more than a small aleph, then he makes room for the Divine Presence to dwell in him. His head is not swollen with the cotton candy of self-regard.

Moshe was the humblest of all men. Moshe made himself so little that he was barely in this world at all. He didn’t even want to be a small aleph. He, as no man before or since, saw that there is only one aleph in all of Creation, only one Number One — G-d.

Moshe made his own aleph — his ego — so small, that he merited that the Torah was given through him.

When Moshe had finished writing the Torah, some ink was left in his pen. As he passed the pen across his forehead the drops of ink became beams of light shining from his visage.

That extra ink that was left in Moshe’s pen was the ink that should have gone to write the Big Aleph; instead it became a corona of shining light to adorn the humblest of men.

This Torah portion is a very difficult one for us to understand today. This Portion starts the book of Vayikra otherwise known as Leviticus. The sages call this book "Torah Kohanim" or the "Torah of the High Priest". This first portion discusses in very dry depth the korbanot {Offerings} which were to be brought for various transgressions or thanksgiving offerings. Today we do not have a Holy Temple at which we can give offerings. The sages have taught us that when the Temple was destroyed that the ability to get close to Hashem was through prayer and the daily prayers were arranged in the same way that the morning, noon, and evening offerings were made {Sacharit, Mincha, and Maariv}.

Here are some videos which discuss this parasha:

This one kind of misses the point that we daven to restore the offerings and when Moshiach comes we will make these same offerings... But it covers some of the major points in an easy to understand way...