The Good that is Stored Up

Rabbi Melanie Aron

October 2, 2004

Reading from the actual Torah scroll is much more difficult than reading out of a Chumash, a printed book with the Torah text, for several reasons. Most people are aware that the Torah scroll lacks vowel sounds and punctuation making reading correctly a challenge. The trophe, the cantillation, takes the place of punctuation in some ways, and helps the reader pause in the appropriate places.

There is another aspect to the challenge of reading from a Torah scroll and that has to do with the calligraphy of the Torah. As I am sure we will learn in greater detail later this year when the Sofer, the Torah scribe visits our congregation to write our Torah scroll, the calligraphy of the Torah is very stylized. All the letters of the aleph bet, the Hebrew alphabet, are created out of three basic strokes. Because of that, recognizing some of the letters can be difficult. Are we looking at a chet, or two vav’s next to each other? Is that two letters, or one letter stretched so that the scribe ends the line with the appropriate word? These possible confusions worried the soferim, the Jewish religious authorities in the period just after the writing of the Talmud. They were particularly concerned about cases where people might derive the wrong meaning from the text. In order to overcome that confusion, those involved with maintaining the text of the Torah, decreed that certain letters should be enlarged, and that dots should be placed over certain letters, and you will find them that way in every Torah scroll.

The most famous of these is the final word of the Shema. Shma Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonie Echad. That final Daled is larger than all the other letters, lest you get confused and read it as a reysh. Then instead of proclaiming that God is One, you would be proclaiming that God is strange, theologically quite problematic. Other enlarged letters include the bet with which the Torah begins. Bet is the second letter of the alef-bet, reminding us that however much we know, we don’t even know alef, the first letter. There is also an enlarged letter at the midpoint of the Torah, and an enlarged hey in Moses’final poem, blessing of the Israelites. In that hey is also one of the names of God, it reminds us that all the miracles and wonders that Moses performed came from God.

As second example of a Tikkun Sofrim are the dots that appear over part of the verse describing Esau and Jacob’s reconciliation after twenty one years part: “Esau ran to greet him. He embraced him and falling on his neck……And Esau and Jacob embraced and kissed.” The dots appear over the word “kissed.” The scholarly explanation is that we find these dots where the text has an inauthentic extra letter, which had crept in and was recognized as a mistake but which the soferim didn’t want to take the authority to remove. Of course the Midrash has a much more interesting explanation. They say these dots are teeth marks, as Esau really intended to bite Jacob and it was God’s intervention that turned it into a kiss.

The Torah portion we read this morning, also includes one of the special scribal marks, an enlarged letter, in this case a nun. Our tradition provides many explanations. One of the more fanciful explanations is that this enlarged nun is a runaway from another part of the Tanach. And where did this enlarged Nun originally belong? In the Ashrei of course, the well known acrostic Psalm which includes all the letters of the aleph bet, except the Nun. In a similar way there is a tradition that the yud that is removed from Sarai’s name, when her name is changed to Sarah, turns Hoshea, into Yehoshua, that is Joshua, Moses’ successor.

Another explanation reminds us that if the Nun were misread, our text would read, instead of God extending kindness or storing up kindness—God withholding kindness, the exact opposite of this passage comes to teach.

Our Torah portion, the description of the thirteen attributes of God is a very important and pivotal text, reappearing also in Numbers, Jonah, Joel, Micah, Nehemiah and Chronicles. It is a foundational text to our understanding of God. One key teaching is that God acts towards us with chesed, giving us more than we deserve, judging us always with the benefit of the doubt. This is one of God’s thirteen attributes and one which we are to emulate. Another key teaching is that kindness is stored up in some way by God, that acts of goodness don’t disappear but endure even when we don’t immediately see their effect. Related to this is the confidence that what people do in one generation, endures beyond their deaths. This is expressed in one of the introductions to the Kaddish found in our Reform prayer book which reminds us that, even when we do not see the positive effects of our good actions, they are there, like ripples in water, continuing, even when unobserved. This is also like the famous story of Honi and the carob tree. Honi plans a tree from which he will not benefit, due to his old age, because others before him have planted the trees from which he derived food and shade.

Loryn and Jordan, we pray that you will not be discouraged when your good deeds do not always achieve their immediate ends. Have confidence that the good you do is stored up for the future and may you reap the benefits of the good stored up by past generations.