The Early Torah sages were called Sofrim [= scribes/those who count] because they were able to count all the letters of the Torah . They used to say, "The letter Vav of the word 'Gachon' (Parshat Shemini, VaYikra 11:42) is the half-way point of the Sefer Torah . . . " . Rav Yosef asked, "Is the Vav of 'Gachon' the last letter of the first half of the Torah, or the first of the second half?" Abaye answered him, "Let us bring a Sefer Torah and count the letters, to find out! Did not Rabbah bar bar Chanah say that when a similar question was raised in the past, the sages did not move from there until they brought a Sefer Torah and counted?" Rav Yosef replied, "Those sages were experts in Chaserot V'Yeterot [= what must be written lacking and what must be written in a supplemented manner] while we are not experts in this matter. (Thus, our counting will not be reliable in determining the central letter of the Sefer Torah.)"

(Gemara Kiddushin 30a)

A difficulty arises, however, if one actually counts the letters of the Torah. There are 304,805 letters in the Torah according to modern counts. The Vav of 'Gachon' is not located at the midpoint letter -- #152,403 -- but rather nearly 5,000 letters later, at letter #157,336!

Admittedly, Rav Yosef said that we are not expert at determining Chaserot V'Yeterot. The simple understanding of Chaserot V'Yeterot is that some words can be spelled both with and without the letters Vav Yud Aleph or Heh, as these "supplementary letters" are written to aid the recognition of vowels, but are not themselves pronounced. Rav Yosef is then saying that in our Sifrei Torah, there might be a few words written without Vavs or Yuds that should have been written with them, or vice versa. However, it would seem bizarre to consider that 5,000 (!) letters were added or missing in our Sifrei Torah. Even when all of the known Mesorahs for writing Torah scrolls, from all the various Jewish congregations around the world, are taken into consideration, there are still only *9* inconsistencies in spelling. Clearly, the missing 5,000 letters cannot be attributed to incorrect spelling of words.

Furthermore, the Halacha states that if even a single letter is added or missing in a Sefer Torah, the entire Sefer Torah is invalid (see Tosefot Menachot beg. 30a). Is it possible that Rav Yosef was challenging the validity of every Sefer Torah that existed in his time?

Rav Eliyahu Posek answers (Piskai Eliyahu part 3:1) that perhaps the Sofrim, who counted the letters, meant the following: Many words in the Torah should be written with a Vav or Yud, yet the Torah deletes those letters for exegetical purposes -- or vice versa. If one were to compile a list of the Vavs and Yuds that the Torah excluded or included when it should not have, grammatically, the Vav of 'Gachon' would be located at the middle of the list (it is assumed that 'Gachon' should really be written without a Vav).

We would then explain the Gemara as follows: Rav Yosef asked whether the Vav of 'Gachon' is the last letter of the first half of this letter list, or the first of the second half. In order to determine the answer, it was recommended that all the letters that are included or excluded when they ought not have been, be counted. Rav Yosef responded that since they lacked the grammatical expertise necessary to determine in which words the Vav and Yud would serve as extra letters and in which words they were part of the actual word, they would not know which letters to count. (See article by R. Yitzchak Zilber in "Shma'atsin" vol. 43 for a similar explanation.)

There is a tradition that the Bnai Yisroel in any given generation never number less than 600,000 people.

(Rabbeinu Gershom, Er'chin 32b)

There are 600,000 letters in the Sefer Torah just as there are 600,000 souls in the twelve tribes of the Bnai Yisroel.

(Zohar Chadash, Shir HaShirim page 74 column 4)

The soul of everyone in Yisroel stems from one of the six hundred thousand letters in the Torah. The name 'Yisroel' can be seen as an acronym for the words 'Y'ESH 'S'HISIM 'R'IBOE 'O'TIYOT 'L'ATORAH (= There are six hundred thousand letters in the Torah).

(Megaleh Amukot, Va'etchanan #186)

Clearly this is problematic. As noted previously, our modern day count detects only 304,805 letters in the Torah. Why does the Zohar say that there are 600,000 letters -- nearly double the apparent number! The answer of Rav Eliyahu Posek, cited above, obviously cannot explain the whereabouts of the missing 295,000+ letters. His solution does not provide for missing letters at all!

The Zohar Chadash itself suggests that when counting the letters of the Torah, we must not count each letter as a single letter. Rather, we must count each letter according to the number of letters it comprises when its name is spelled out. For instance, Aleph is counted as 'Aleph, `Lamed, `Pheh, or three letters. Bet is spelled 'Bet, 'Yud, 'Tav, making it, too, three letters. Gimmel, is 'Gimmel, 'Yud 'Mem 'Lamed, or four letters. If all the letters of the Torah are counted in this manner, explains the Zohar, there will be six hundred thousand letters in the Torah!

The Zohar's method of counting may also explain how the Vav of Gachon is actually the halfway mark of the Sefer Torah. The number of letters before that Vav may equal the number of letters following it, if they are counted in the above manner. Rav Yosef, in pointing out his lack of expertise in Chaserot V'Yeterot, may also have been explaining why he was not able to duplicate the Zohar's method of counting. Many letters of the Aleph Bet can be spelled either with or without supplementary Vavs and Yuds to aid in their pronunciation. For instance, Bet can be spelled 'Bet, 'Yud, 'Tav, or 'Bet, 'Tav. Vav can be spelled 'Vav, 'Yud, 'Vav, or 'Vav, 'Vav, etc. As a result, our ignorance regarding the spelling of many of the Torah's letters prevents us from properly counting how many letters precede and succeed the Vav of 'Gachon'!

Rav Shneiur Zalman of Liady (the author of the Tanya, and first Rebbe of the Lubavitcher dynasty) provides another answer (Likutei Torah, Behar page 43 column 4). In order to count 600,000 letters, he writes, one must add to every vowel that lacks supplementary letters, those letters. For instance, it is possible to add an Aleph or Heh after every Patach or Komatz vowel that is not followed by them (see Rashi, beg. of Ketubot 69b, end of Makkot 7b). A Vav can be added after every Cholem or Kubutz vowel, and a Yud after every Chirik or Tzerei vowel. If all these additions are made, there will be 600,000 letters in the Torah!

This, too, would explain Rav Yosef's statement in Kiddushin. The Vav in 'Gachon' is the middle letter in the Torah after all the vowels lacking supplementary letters are supplemented. But, explains Rav Yosef, we lack expertise with regard to which vowels can support an extra letter without changing the word's meanings and which vowels cannot. As a result, we do not know which of these unwritten supplementary letters to count!

According to both of these answers, obviously, there is no doubt as to the validity of our Sifrei Torah. What is written in the Torah is all properly accounted for. Rav Yosef's doubts were only in regard to counting what is *not* written in the Sefer Torah itself!

Perhaps we might approach both the question of the displaced Vav of Gachon, and that of the missing 300,000 letters, in a different manner. There is a tradition that at the beginning of every new Parsha-section in the Sefer Torah, a space, the width of nine letters, must be left blank (Rambam, Hilchot Sefer Torah 8:1). The Bet Yosef (Yoreh Deah 275 s.v. Ul'inyan Shiur) points out that the letters of the Torah are of different widths, so the size of a space nine letters wide will depend on which letters are used as a model. Since the tradition does not specify which letters to use, writes the Bet Yosef, nine widths of the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet -- the Yud -- will suffice.

It is now possible to understand how the Vav of 'Gachon' is the middle letter of the Torah and how there are 600,000 letters in the Torah. According to the Bet Yosef, an unspecified letter does not refer to an average sized letter, but rather to the smallest letter. When counting the letters of the Torah, perhaps we should not count each character as a single letter. Rather, letters which must (halachically) be written the width of two Yuds, count as two "letters." A large letter, such as the Shin, counts as three letters since its width is as wide as three Yuds (the Shin is comprised of three Yuds extending from a base). In fact, if we allow another bit of space to separate each of the Yuds of the top of the Shin from each other, the Shin is two bits *more* than three Yuds wide.

Simple calculation reveals that there are only 4 letters one Yud's width wide: Vav, Zayin, Yud, and Nun Sofit (final Nun). There are 2 letters a Yud and a half wide -- Gimmel and Nun (due to their bases). 15 letters are two Yud widths wide, 5 letters are two plus-a-bit Yud widths wide, and 1 letter is three plus-two-bits Yud widths wide. This just about doubles the number of letters in the Sefer Torah! Therefore, if each letter is counted by its Yud widths, there will be 600,000 letters in the Torah, instead of 300,000!

This suggestion can also explain Rav Yosef's statement that lack of expertise with regard to Chaserot V'Yeterot prevents us from placing the Vav of 'Gachon' at the center of the Torah. Perhaps Chaserot V'Yeterot does not refer to *vowels* and *words* that are lacking or expanded with supplementary letters. Rather, it refers to *letters* that are lacking or supplemented in their widths. Massoretically, certain letters in the Sefer Torah are written in one place either smaller (= lacking) or larger (= supplemented) than in other places. For example, the Aleph in the word 'VaYikra' (VaYikra 1:1) is written smaller than usual, and so is the Yud in the word 'Teshi' (Devarim 32:18). The Bet of the first word in the Torah, 'Bereishit', is written larger than normal, and so is the Vav in 'Gachon'.

When the Sofrim stated that the Vav of 'Gachon' is the midpoint of the Torah, perhaps they meant that if all the letters of the Torah were to be counted by their Yud widths, this Vav would be the center of the Torah! When Rav Yosef commented that we cannot confirm this statement due to our lack of expertise in Chaserot V'Yeterot, he may have meant that we do not know positively which letters to enlarge or shrink, and how much to enlarge them or to shrink them, due to an uncertainty in the Mesorah. Nevertheless, this uncertainty would not render a doubt as to the validity of today's Sifrei Torah. The Rambam states explicitly (Hilchot Sefer Torah 6:9) that if a letter is made larger or smaller than its true Massoretic size, it does not invalidate a Sefer Torah! Our own Sifrei Torah can now be seen as having 600,000 letters, and the Vav of 'Gachon' may truly be the central character of those 600,000 letters!

(After I publicized this D'var Torah, a friend showed me that Rav Yakov Kaminetsky, Zatza'l, at the end of his "Emet L'Yakov" on the Torah, suggests a nearly identical approach to explain how there are 600,000 letters in the Torah. I thank Hashem for leading me in the path of such a great Torah scholar. Rav Yakov even calculated the total number of letters, based on this hypothesis, and came out with 576,000 letters, still 23,000 letters short. However, Rav Yakov didn't count the extra "bits" in the six letters that I mentioned. Also, as my friend Harav David Lichtman suggested, we ought to add nine letter-widths for each new Parasha in the Torah. [The Halacha requires that at least a nine-letter space be left between Parshiot.] If each of the extra "bits" are taken to be equal to the width of 1/2 letter, we find that there are approximately 597,000 letter-widths in the Torah! [The numbers of times that each letter appears in the Torah can be found at the end of the Torah Temimah chumashim and in the new Concordance. The figures in the two sources vary slightly. See also Rav Kaplan's footnote in Menashe ben Yisroel: The Conciliator (Hermon: N.Y.,1972) Part 1 page 250.])