Useless Fun(?) Tidbit

[Art Roth]

Don't know why I did this, but I searched the names of the 54 sidrot in the Torah for the presence of the letters in the Hebrew alphabet.  Every letter appears at least once, but some are fairly rare.  Here are the "winners" on the rare scale.

Gimel appears just once (ויגש)

Samekh appears only twice, and very close together (פנחס, מסעי)

Two letters appear just three times 

      zayin (תזריע, האזינו, וזאת הברכה) --- and 2 of them are the last 2 in the Torah

      tet (משפטים, מטות, שפטים)

Honorable mention goes to the letter kaf, which appears four times, but three of them are in the word כי, which some people omit from the name of the sidra in informal conversation:

כי תשא, כי תצא, כי תבא, וזאת הברכה

[Simon Montagu]

On 25/03/2025 11:48, Art Roth wrote:
> Don't know why I did this, but I searched the names of the 54 sidrot in
> the Torah for the presence of the letters in the Hebrew alphabet.  Every
> letter appears at least once, but some are fairly rare.  Here are the
> "winners" on the rare scale.
>

<snip>> Honorable mention goes to the letter kaf, which appears four

times, but
> three of them are in the word כי, which some people omit from the name
> of the sidra in informal conversation:
> כי תשא, כי תצא, כי תבא, וזאת הברכה
>

I think you forgot to count final kaf, in
לך לך, בהעלותך, וילך, שלח לך,

[Avram Herzog]

Hi Art,

This is fun. It makes for a good riddle too, which can be toyed with and worded in different ways.

Kol Tuv,

Avi Herzog

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[bgg1]

Some Sefardim refer to מצורע as טהורה, so that gets you an extra ט.

[Art Roth]

You're right, it didn't occur to me to look for final kaf or khaf.  Good catch.

[Mike Stein]

Of course, as we learn from Sar Shalom (https://daat.ac.il/daat/kitveyet/shana/sarshalom-2.pdf), the division into sidrot varied across time periods and communities.

[RA Alpert]

I wonder also if among all those sedros, everyone always referred to them by the "names" we use today, i.e., in those cases where not identical with the first name.....

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[Art Roth]

Mike, thanks for that material.  I read several parts (but not even close to all) of it and found it very informative, so I'm glad you posted it.

But I'm not sure I agree with your words "of course" --- many people on this list probably didn't/don't know much (or anything at all?) about the history of the division into sidrot.

And I'm also not sure how relevant the history is to the exercise that I undertook to start this topic.  Even if they were divided differently over time, I think it remains reasonable to ask about the distribution of the letters of the alphabet in the names of the sidrot as we have them today.

Art