The Small Aleph: Humility at the Heart of the Offering

1“And He called to Moshe, and Hashem spoke to him.”¹ The Baal HaTurim, R' Yaakov ben Asher, explains in his commentary on the Torah why Vayikra is written with a small aleph, smaller than the letters around it in the Torah scroll. Moshe Rabbeinu wanted to write vayikar, “He happened upon,” without the aleph, as if Hashem had appeared to him only by chance; that is the word the Torah uses for Bilam.² But the Holy One, blessed be He, told Moshe to write it with an aleph, and he wrote it small. So far his words. But why was the small aleph placed in the Torah's passage on the korbanos, the offerings, and not somewhere else?

2We may explain it this way. The early authorities asked what the reason for an offering is. If a man sinned, what sin did the animal commit? What is the point of slaughtering it and sprinkling its blood, and how does this bring atonement to its owner? The Ramban explains the offering as follows.³ As he performs all the acts of the offering, a person should think that he sinned against his God with his body and his soul, and that by right his own blood should be spilled and his body burned. But the Creator, in His kindness, took a substitute from him and let this offering atone. Its blood is in place of his blood, a life in place of a life, and the chief limbs of the offering stand for his own chief limbs. That is the gist of his words. In other words, “The soul that sins, it shall die,”⁴ but the Holy One, blessed be He, in His mercy on His creatures, wished to set the world right. So He commanded that an animal be brought as an offering, and a person must think that everything done to the animal is what should have been done to him.

3It seems that we can add a point to the Ramban's words. Thinking this way will surely lead a person to deep lowliness and humility, in the spirit of the verse “The offerings of God are a broken spirit.”⁵ This is the heart of the offering: it should bring a person to true humility, which by itself will make him regret all his evil deeds. This is how a person's sin was atoned for in the days when the Beis HaMikdash stood, and the Zohar says much the same.⁶ Humility of this kind leaves the Satan no power to accuse that person any longer. As my holy ancestor the Rebbe of Ozharov, zt"l, taught in the name of another holy ancestor of mine, the Yid HaKadosh, zt"l: “The remedy for sweetening the harsh judgments is humility and lowliness. For a judgment must rest on something, and on ayin, on ‘nothing,’ no judgment can rest.”⁷ Those are his holy words.

4It follows that the heart of the offering is lowliness and humility. This answers our question. The small aleph, a sign of humility and lowliness, was placed in the passage on the offerings, of all places, to show that the whole point of the mitzvah of the korbanos is to bring a person to deep humility.

5This also lets us explain the verse “When a man of you brings an offering.”⁸ Chazal already took up the question of why the verse says mikem, “of you.”⁹ But we have said that the whole purpose of the offerings is to bring a person to lowliness. So we may say that the verse hints that the heart of the offering is mikem, “of you”: in your own minds, you should be offering yourselves to Hashem. In this way you will attain a broken spirit and make your whole being as nothing before Hashem. [This is along the lines of the Alshich's explanation of mikem: from what is within you, namely the soul.]

6May the Holy One, blessed be He, help us not only to “expound well” but also to “fulfill well.”¹⁰ Amen, may it be His will.