This week’s parshat Sh’mini may contain 2 enlarged letters, depending on whether or not you are using a Chasidic Sefer Torah.
The first is Vayiqra/Leviticus 11:30 – the large Lamed in ve-haLta’ah, “lizard”.
…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”.
“Anything going about on its belly, anything going about on all fours, up to anything with many legs, among all swarming-creatures that swarm upon the earth: you are not to eat them, for they are detestable-things!”
There is an idea that this Vav is written large because it’s the middle letter of the Torah: Vav, the hook. The uniter. The letter which, according to Tanakh Yehoash occurs in the Torah 30,509 times.
R’ Menachem Kasher says that according to R’ Yitzchak Yosef Zilber, if you count all of the miniscules & majuscules in a non-Kabbalistic Torah, you’d get 16 of them (not counting the 2 backwards Nunim in Sefer Bamidbar/Numbers 10:35-36). Of these, the middle one is this Vav of gachOn. Even when you count all the odd letters in a Kabbalist Sefer Torah, which has additional letter oddities according to R’ Yosef Tov Elem, there are a total of 32 letters & the 16th is this same Vav.
So, why, if this Vav is not in fact the centre letter of the Torah, has it been written so big since the 3rd Century c.e?
We carried G@d with us in the Mishkan as we wandered through the desert. “Mishkan” comes from the same root as “Shekhinah”, a.k.a G@d’s intimate, Feminine Presence. That Interior Being. The silver hooks from which the Mishkan’s enclosing curtains, or yeri’ot, hung from in Sh’mot/Exodus 27:9-10 were called Vavs. The Vavs connected the yeri’ot to their posts, or amudim. Even today, in sofrut the sheets of klaf (parchment) of a Sefer Torah are known as yeri’ot, the columns of text as amudim. Since the mid-1800’s a tradition has arisen to begin each amud with a Vav, “hooking” each of these veils of Torah over their supports so we can continue to carry G@d with us. Our Torahs offering a Place for the Presence.
As we walk our journeys as individuals & as a People, may we all learn from this holy letter how to hook ourselves to the most deeply intimate inside of G@d.