A Tale of Two Alephs
How Humility Conquered Perfection
The Lord called (Vayikra) to Moses and spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting, saying…(Leviticus 1:1)
“Adam, Seth, Enosh.” (Chronicles 1:1)
“With regard to Adam, the first man, whose recognition of his own greatness caused him to commit the Sin of the Tree of Knowledge, an oversized aleph is used.” (Alter Rebbe)
“Genuine humility is demonstrated not only by seeking to emphasize one’s own nothingness and insignificance, but also by by seeking to highlight the positive qualities which another person possesses.” (The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Likkutei Sichos)
Now Moses himself was very humble, more so than any other human being on earth. (Numbers 12:3)
Rav Yehuda says that Rav says: When Moses ascended on High, he found the Holy One, Blessed be He, sitting and tying crowns on the letters of the Torah. Moses said before God: Master of the Universe, who is preventing You from giving the Torah without these additions? God said to him: There is a man who is destined to be born after several generations, and Akiva ben Yosef is his name; he is destined to derive from each and every thorn of these crowns mounds upon mounds of halakhot. It is for his sake that the crowns must be added to the letters of the Torah.
Moses said before God: Master of the Universe, show him to me. God said to him: Return behind you. Moses went and sat at the end of the eighth row in Rabbi Akiva’s study hall and did not understand what they were saying. Moses’ strength waned, as he thought his Torah knowledge was deficient. When Rabbi Akiva arrived at the discussion of one matter, his students said to him: My teacher, from where do you derive this? Rabbi Akiva said to them: It is a halakha transmitted to Moses from Sinai. When Moses heard this, his mind was put at ease, as this too was part of the Torah that he was to receive.
Moses returned and came before the Holy One, Blessed be He, and said before Him: Master of the Universe, You have a man as great as this and yet You still choose to give the Torah through me. Why? God said to him: Be silent; this intention arose before Me. Moses said before God: Master of the Universe, You have shown me Rabbi Akiva’s Torah, now show me his reward. God said to him: Return to where you were. Moses went back and saw that they were weighing Rabbi Akiva’s flesh in a butcher shop [bemakkulin], as Rabbi Akiva was tortured to death by the Romans. Moses said before Him: Master of the Universe, this is Torah and this is its reward? God said to him: Be silent; this intention arose before Me. (Menachot 29b)
Vayikra, the first word of the Torah’s third book, is spelled with a small aleph. The Lubavitcher Rebbe notes that the Alter Rebbe connected this small aleph to another aleph in the Torah, the large, over-sized aleph that begins the book of Chronicles, the aleph in Adam’s name. These two alephs, one small, one big, teach us about two attitudes we can take towards our own greatness, modeled by Moses and Adam respectively. Moses is said to have been the humblest person who ever lived. Meanwhile, mystical tradition regards Adam as the most perfect being who ever lived. After all, the original Adam, Adam haKadmon, pre-dates the eating of the forbidden fruit and and the exile from Eden. In one regard, Adam is the greater figure, thus his aleph is signified as such. But the Lubavitcher Rebbe takes a different approach. The two alephs come to teach about Moses’s paradoxical superiority to Adam, precisely because of his humility. Adam’s large aleph signifies his over-confidence and haughtiness, which, unchecked, led him to his Fall
The Talmud (Shabbat 146a) teaches that the receiving of the Torah atop Sinai purified the Israelites of Adam’s transgression. From this, we can make an inference. The error behind Adam’s error was an insufficient amount of humility; the corrective to it was to receive the Torah in a state of humility, as embodied by Moses. Receiving the Torah was a kind of Tikkun for the error of Adamic arrogance.
Humility does not mean self-deprecation or self-diminishment; it does not mean focusing on one’s flaws and down-playing one’s strengths. Rather, humility means acknowledging that one’s strengths are fundamentally gifts. The person who acts superior, even if strong, fails. The person who acts humbly, becomes stronger, through their capacity to receive. Moses’s small aleph, in Vayikra, signifies not just the room he made for the divine revelation, but the room he made for empowering other leaders to contribute. Great leaders surround themselves with great peers, and even great challengers. Adam was talented, yet never built a team. When faced with a crisis, he blames Eve.
Moses’s humility is evinced in a famous Talmudic story in which he finds himself in the back of Rabbi Akiva’s classroom. Moses genuinely wants to know why God would not have given the Torah to a sage greater than himself. Yet this very question underscores just what is so remarkable about Moses—an ability to place his own ego aside, see strengths in others, and acknowledge his own limitations.
Psychological Barriers to Authentic Humility
Building on Moses’s model of humility, we can examine why such genuine humility remains elusive for most of us. Unlike Adam, who succumbed to the temptation of self-aggrandizement, Moses achieved greatness precisely through his ability to overcome the psychological barriers that typically prevent us from embracing our limitations.
The first barrier is fear. We resist humility because we equate it with vulnerability. Adam's response after eating from the Tree—hiding and then blaming—reflects this primal fear. To acknowledge our limitations feels threatening; we worry that others will take advantage of our acknowledged weaknesses or that we will lose status. Moses, in contrast, repeatedly voiced his inadequacies (“Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh?”) yet found strength rather than diminishment in this honesty.
A second barrier is our attachment to self-image. We construct elaborate narratives about who we are and what we deserve. Adam's large aleph symbolizes this inflated self-conception—a belief in one’s exceptional status that cannot tolerate contradiction. The small aleph of Moses suggests an alternative: an identity flexible enough to incorporate both strengths and limitations without defensiveness.
Perhaps the most subtle barrier is the misunderstanding of humility itself. We often mistake humility for self-abnegation or false modesty. Yet true humility, as demonstrated by Moses, involves neither denying one's gifts nor exaggerating one's flaws. Rather, it manifests as a clear-eyed recognition of reality—that our talents, however considerable, are fundamentally gifts that come with corresponding responsibilities.
The Talmudic story of Moses in Rabbi Akiva's classroom illuminates this point. Moses doesn't pretend to understand what he doesn't; neither does he dismiss the value of Rabbi Akiva's teachings out of insecurity. Instead, his response demonstrates the essence of psychological maturity: the capacity to appreciate excellence in others without feeling diminished by it.
This form of humility liberates us from the exhausting maintenance of a flawless facade. When Moses says to God, “I am slow of speech and tongue,” he isn't engaging in strategic self-deprecation but establishing the groundwork for authentic connection and divine partnership. His small aleph creates the space for genuine relationship—with God, with his people, and with his own limitations.
The contrast between the small aleph of Moses and the large aleph of Adam reveals that true greatness lies not in the assertion of self but in the capacity to transcend it. Where Adam grasped for knowledge and status, Moses opened himself to receive wisdom and share leadership. In this paradoxical humility—this strength through acknowledged limitation—we find not just a theological insight but a psychological truth: our fullest potential emerges not when we inflate ourselves but when we right-size our egos to make room for connection, growth, and purpose beyond ourselves.
Shabbat Shalom,
Zohar Atkins