VAYIKRA: Ethics from the Weekly Torah Portion

VAYIKRA:
THE SMALL ALEF

The first letter of the Aleph-Bet, the Hebrew "alphabet" is the "leader" of all letters, as not only is it first in line, the letter "aleph" is derived from "aluf" which means leader, general (in a military sense) or champion.

In the Torah, there are a few occasions where the letters are written in an unusual way. One of these is the opening word of our Torah portion, Vayikra. The first 4 letters are written as usual, but the final letter which happens to be an "aleph" is written smaller than the others. Why is this so?

Aleph is the symbol of pride. A champion, a leader. However, in our verse it is written smaller. This was to show Moses' humility. However, why did this require the letter aleph? Couldn't another letter be written smaller to display Moses' honesty?

Because, many times, one can be modest and humble, but when it comes to the area in which they are a champion or a leader, their feelings of humility become temporarily suspended...

Therefore, the Torah is giving us a clear lesson here. Even in the areas in which we are leaders, we should retain our humility. One may be an expert in a certain field but we must realise that it is our special and unique talents that should be the very cause of our state of being humble.

Think about this; what if your capabilities were given to someone else instead of you? Wouldn't he then go on to surpass your achievements?

So we learn from the very letter "aleph", the root of pride and arrogance, the very art of being humble.