A kuf with a choice...

So this week's sedra is B'chukotai. Usually jammed onto the previous sedra B'har except when there is a leap year.

So what's exciting about this sedra from a scribal viewpoint? What gets the sofer all excited and lends a layer of interpretation that I refer to as Visual Midrash?

Well very little actually.

According to scribal tradition there is a letter kuf in the word kom'miyut (erect) in Vayikra 26:13


'I am Hashem who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from being slaves, and I broke the staves of your yoke and I led you erect'.
One of 185 kufs in the Torah that supposedly have this.
The Ba'al Haturim explains that it is drawn with [three] taggin enhancing the letter kuf [which stands for 100]. For in the future, their [Israel's] stature will be one hundred cubits.' Some apparently say two hundred cubits which is why he says there are two extra taggin - kuf normally has one. This has been taken from Bava Batra 75a where the Tannaim discuss the word kom'miyut in the verse and conclude that in the world to come we will be of a much higher spiritual stature.

There are some disagreements on editions of the Ba'al HaTurim over whether it is three or two taggin in total, but the most interesting thing is that whilst one is obviously an extra tag, pointing upwards with a crown, the other extra one is not. Instead it points sharply downwards and has no 'blob' on the top. In this way it is more an okets (thorn).

Perhaps, given the subject matter that preceeded it, the extra upwards tag symbolises the spiritual and material heights one would reach if one did 'follow [Hashem's] decrees and observe [Hashem's] commandments' as we are required to do in 26:3. And it points upwards towards those verses of reward (26:4-12) and we obtain a crown for that. However if we do not choose this path then instead 'hold [Hashem's] decrees loathsome and our souls reject [Hashem's] ordinances' (26:15) then the tag/okets points sharply downwards towards the verses of punsihment (26:15 onwards) and denotes our spiritual and physical descent from holiness (kuf = kadosh).

The kuf with it's extra taggin upwards and downwards therefore represents a decision point (a bechira) midway between the two halves of the sedra and we can choose which way to go. Only one way however gains us a crown of spiritual achievement.