There was a tradition that the letters of the alef-bet have a life beyond pencil and paper, Rav Harriett told them. “A life beyond language, even,” she added, peeping pointedly over the top of her gold-rimmed glasses at their mother.
Their mother, the linguist, made a face like Who am I to argue with a rabbi?
Then Rav Harriett told them four stories about the life of the letters of the alef-bet.
The first was about creation. It said that in the beginning God began to play, for delight’s sake, with the signs and wonders (“That’s what we now call letters,” Rav Harriett said). God shaped them and mixed them and rearranged them and tossed them from hand to hand and pretty soon they began to flow and whirl and dance and lo! From them everything came into being.
The second story was about Moses. It said that when he got angry and threw down the tablets that had the Ten Commandments written on them, the tablets themselves shattered and lay on the ground, but the letters that had been carved on them? The letters flew up to heaven.
The third was about a shepherd boy. This boy wanted to pray, but he didn’t know how to read the prayer book. So he said to God, “I’ll just call out all the letters and You, You go ahead and arrange them in the way that pleases You most!” And God really liked this.
The last story she told them was more obscure. (“What’s obscure?” they wanted to know. By then the spaghetti was bubbling in the pot and the windowpanes over the sink as well as the lenses of her glasses had become fogged. “Not well known,” said Rav Harriett. “More literally, hidden,” put in their mother, the linguist.) This was the story that one letter is missing from the alef-bet. It was there in the beginning, but it got lost. “Only,” said Rav Harriett, “when it is found will the brokenness in the universe be healed.”