Ilustration Credit: Elad Lifshitz, Dov Abramson Studio
The letters in our סִפְרֵי תּוֹרָה (Sifrei Torah, Torah scrolls) have very special shapes, sometimes a little different (sometimes a lot different!) from what we’re used to.
Here is a comparison between what a regular letter het might look like, and how it might look in a Sefer Torah.
The het on the right is just a simple shape with two sides and a sloped top connecting them. The het on the left—the kind you would find in many Sifrei Torah—is actually a vav on the right, a zayin on the left, and a little hat connecting them!
Another big difference in the letters in Sifrei Torah is that some of them have crowns! Check out these two words from our parashah:
Look carefully at the tzadi and the gimel—what do you see on top? That’s right, a crown of three little lines, each one shaped like a baby zayin. If you like that, check out this word from later in our parashah:
Whoa, every letter in that word has a crown! What are they there for? We don’t really know. In the Talmud, we hear stories about Moshe going to receive the Torah from God and seeing God “tying” these crowns onto the letters, and about R. Akiva learning things from every single crown. One thing is for sure: These crowns make the writing of a Sefer Torah more beautiful and more special. There are seven letters that get crowns—how many words can you make out of them?
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