Humility and Strength Can Show Up in the Smallest of Ways

“The most expensive perfume…and the most powerful poison…come in small packages.” This was a quote from my high school geometry teacher, only 4’10″. I thought it was a funny statement at the time, but what she was referring to was the power and strength that comes with things we may find small and unassuming. Interestingly, we see how powerful smallness can really be in this week’s Torah portion.

This week, we begin the book of Leviticus, or Vayikra in Hebrew. The first word of the portion is vayikra, meaning “and He called.” The portion starts out with God calling to Moses, inviting Moses further into relationship with God as God bestows further commandments and guidelines for Moses and the Israelites. Leading up to this point, God “talked” to Moses or “spoke” to him, but commentators believe that “calling to” Moses was a more intimate form of communication, reserved typically for only the angels who would call lovingly back and forth to each other, declaring “Holy, holy, holy is the God of angels whose presence fills all the earth!” (Isaiah 6:3). Now in our parsha, God is calling as lovingly to Moses as the angels call to each other about God. What an honor! But as we know, Moses was a humble man.

If you look closely, in every single Torah everywhere in the world, the word vayikra (first word on the right) is written a certain way:

Many of our commentators held the view that our Torah was written by God through Moses. Though Moses was an intermediary between God and the people, their blessings and fortune were much bigger than he was. The commentators teach us that when Moses wrote the first word of this portion, vayikra, to describe how God was calling to him, he purposefully made the letter aleph smaller than the other letters as a sign of humility.

Whether we believe the Torah is of Mosaic authorship or not, this lesson from our commentators is an important one. Humility is a strength and can show up in the smallest of ways. When we act with humility, we are not making ourselves small to disappear. Rather, we choose to make space for others and for things greater than ourselves. Like the smaller aleph, humility does not diminish us or our presence, it places us in the greater scheme of things. Strength is not always loud, it is sometimes quiet and refined, like the aleph.

My geometry teacher was right…small is powerful.

May we see strength in the small ways people show up. May we, who sometimes feel small, see the strength in ourselves.

Wishing blessings from my family to yours this Shabbat,
Ranata Shlobin