The Missing Alef – God in Our Lives

Parshat Shlach

by Rabbi Avi Billet

 Towards the end of Shlach, the Torah gives us instructions for a case of what Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan entitles, “Communal Sin Offerings for Idolatry,” based no doubt on Rashi’s explanation of the phrase, “When [the collective] you err and don’t do all of these commandments.”

 15:22 declares, “[This is the law] if you inadvertently [commit an act of idolatry]…” The community then becomes responsible to “prepare one young bull for a burnt offering as an appeasing fragrance to God, along with its prescribed grain offering and libation. [They must also present] one goat for a sin offering.” (15:24)

 On account of the inadvertence of the sin, the Torah goes on to explain, the community has a much easier time achieving atonement, as opposed to if the sins had been purposeful.

 It is hard to understand how the entire nation would inadvertently commit an act of idolatry. Though maybe a case of Trudeaumania (or any similar hype), or a mistaken belief that a spiritual act of some kind is proper when it is in fact idolatrous, are possibilities.

 In either case, the way the Torah depicts the sin offering to be brought is odd. The Hebrew word for this offering is a “Chatat” – normally containing the letters chet, tet, alef, taf. In this case, however, for the only time in the Torah when “chatat” appears, the silent alef is not merely silent. It is missing.

 Why would the Torah leave out a letter that is part of the word? I may not really need the “o” in “enough.” But without it, the word is “enugh.” Even if in context we know what it is, the misspelling should not have a place in the Torah!

 Sure enough, a number of sources and commentators try to explain the missing Alef.

 The Sifrei (Midrash) explains there is a lesson here, that the sin offering is indeed for mistakenly committing an act of idolatry. Just as the alef is the first letter, idolators rebelled against God’s oneness, being the first of all existence.

 Rashi suggests this sin offering is different from all others because with every other sin offering that accompanies an olah (burnt offering) the sin offering is listed first. Here the olah is listed first. The missing alef, therefore, is a call to attention to this anomaly.

 Kli Yakar expands on Rashi, explaining that idolatry is unique in that a person who commits it is considered as having committed all the sins of the Torah. In every other “accidental” sin, the person commits an act of thought and action. If there is no thought or intent, it isn’t “inadvertent” any more – it is “oness” (blameless) (an example of oness is if I am obeying traffic rules and my car breaks something that has been thrown in front of it with no way for me to avoid it). A sinner normally needs to bring two offerings for atonement – the olah for the thought process, and the chatat for the actual deed. Thought is not normally punished if there is no subsequent action (see Tehillim 66:18).

 Normally the chatat comes first because the action is the bigger sin, even though it came second. 

However, when it comes to idolatry, the thought process (atoned through the olah) is the bigger sin, because that is where the denial of God and His role in the world begins. The action is merely a manifestation of the misdeed of thought. “This is why ‘chatat’ is written without an alef, because alef has the numerical value of one which teaches us about the Oneness of God. A person who commits an act of idolatry contradicts God’s Oneness. This is demonstrated through the missing Alef, because that [missing the Alef] is actually the person’s sin. Unlike other sins where the thought is meaningless without the action, the thought process of idolatry [is the source of the person’s problems].”

 Basing himself on the Talmud (Horayot13), the Torah Temimah presents the argument that the chatat offering in this case, is a lesser chatat offering than others – presumably because the main offering here is the olah, for the thought process.

 To summarize, it seems clear that the missing alef is a call to attention (Rashi). Either we have the possibility that the missing Alef is symbolic of God’s Oneness (Sifrei) or it is literally the Torah’s way of telling us what the sin here is (Kli Yakar). From all cases we note that the sin offering is mentioned second to the olah because the greater sin here is in the thought process, which achieves its atonement through the olah [the sin of thought and its olah normally being the lesser of the two evils of thought and action]. Perhaps the missing alef also notes that in this context the action makes the chatat offering lesser important because it is a lesser word than usual.

 While literal idolatry in the form of worshipping idols is not a mainstream problem, there are still proverbial idols that we tend to worship. And the missing alef is a reminder to us that when our thoughts wander from our heavenward goals, that is the bigger sin. When we plan our lives, for example, around television shows instead of around our chavrusas and Torah learning opportunities, we are guilty of the thought process of idolatry.

 In this post-Shavuos week, we need to remind ourselves that being the People of the Book does not only mean that we honor the Torah, or that we have libraries in our homes. It means we must read our books and create homes in which God is at the forefront of our minds at all times. This will certainly help prevent sins of thought, as we build our God-fearing qualities which help us get closer to God. We don’t want any missing Alefs in our collective Jewish experiences.