The Extra Large “B” in the First Letter of Genesis
If you read an English translation of the Bible, you would never know about the Jewish custom of writing some letters larger or smaller than other letters. You would only see this in a Hebrew text or Torah scroll. 17 times in the five books of Moses, a letter is printed either larger or smaller than the surrounding letters. In Hebrew, there are no capital letters – all letters are normally the same size. The first time this occurs is in the first word, “BERESHIT” which means “In the beginning [of]“.
There are three approaches to these letters: 1) Letter Interpretation – based on the meaning of the letter itself, 2) Magnification/Diminuation – the impact of the size of the letter on the meaning of the word, 3) Addition/Omission – treating a large letter as doubled, or a small letter as omitted.
Genesis is the Greek name for the first book of the Bible, in Hebrew, it’s called “BERESHIT” which is the first word. It begins with an enlarged “BEIT” (BEIS for ashkenazi pronunication). Ya’akov ben Asher, commonly known as the Ba’al HaTurim, teaches that the Bible begins with the letter “B” (BEIT) because it is associated with “BRACHA” (blessing), and not the first letter of the alphabet, “A” (ALEPH), which can be associated with the word “ARUR” (curse). The Torah wanted to start on a pleasant note, as Proverbs 3:17 states: “Its way are ways of pleasantness and all its paths are peace.”
Above, we mentioned three ways to interpret a verse based on an enlarged letter. Can you identify which one the Ba’al HaTurim is using here? He uses the meaning of the letter to interpret the verse. He goes on to show that the letter “BEIT” (since it is the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet), has the numeric value of two. The number two is associated with duality. What duality is could this be referring to? Perhaps of heaven and earth, or the physical world verses the spiritual world (the seen as opposed to the unseen).
Dualtiy is also expressed in creation. Reproduction occurs between male and female. Genesis also refers to the contrast of the sun and the moon. From a physics perspective, the parts of the molecule have positive and negative charges, as does electricity and magneticism. One balances the other.
The letter “BEIT” is also the word “BEIT” which literally means “house” or “home”. The temple is called the “BEIT HA-MIKDASH” – basically meaning “the house of holiness”. Thus, the large “BEIT” at the beginning of BERESHIT can also allude to the first and second temple, which represents God dwelling among men.
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