I and א

Many years ago I was at the house of some friends, the Mertz family, and I had nothing else to do so Mrs. Mertz suggested I look at the Encyclopedia. It was the first time in my life that I had ever opened an encyclopedia. I happened to open up to the article on the letter I. I learned that it is the ninth letter of the alphabet, a fact I have never forgetten. Except for A, B, C, M, N, and Z, I don't think of the letters in terms of their place in the alphabet.

In Hebrew, letters also stand for numbers. It is quite difficult for me to find my way around in a Hebrew Bible that numbers the chapters with letters. Some Bibles have both. We have one Bible that numbers verses with numbers, except for every fifth verse, which is numbered with a letter. I don't know who thought of that or why.

א Aleph, or a number 1. In lights on signs it can look like an H or an X. In handwriting it looks a bit like a K. In modern Hebrew it takes the place of an A in words from other languages, like Texas, atlas, April or anthropology. Otherwise it is what I call a vowel-holder, which becomes a vowel when you put various dots on it, or a vowel-starter, which comes after a pointed consonant and before another vowel, as in נָאוֹר , one of my new words for today, which means glorious or bright.

I haven't been able to figure out how to get letters to show up in a different font or size on blogspot.

This will be a good day for making banana bread, something I haven't done in two or three years or more.