אָרִיחַ עַל גַּבֵּי לְבֵינָה—Small bricks on big bricks
Let’s take a break from talking about words and see how the Torah looks. This is a great week to do that because we read שִׁירַת הַיָּם (Shirat Ha-Yam, the Song of the Sea), the section that is about how Moshe and Miriam led Benei Yisrael in song after God split the sea for them. And if you open up the Torah, you can see right away that something different is happening here. It looks like this:
What do you think it looks like? Our Sages imagined a type of building. They called this אָרִיחַ עַל גַּבֵּי לְבֵינָה, a short brick on top of a long one. Meaning, they thought it looked like a brick wall of this sort, where the bricks switch positions row by row:
If you are at shul for Torah reading this week, try to sneak a peek at this part of the Torah; it’s the only part of the Torah written this way!
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