This week, following Tisha B'Av, it is customary to read VaEtchanan (Deutoronomy 3-7). The start of the Three Weeks of communal mourning, preceeding Tisha B'Av, began on the day that the first Tablets were smashed by Moshe (Seventeenth day of Tammuz), and now on this Shabbat, the Shabbat of reconciliation, we read of the giving of the second Tablets to Moshe.

There is a Midrash (homily) that when the first Tablets were broken the stone fell on the earth and the letters on the Tablets ascended to heaven (in keeping with Isaiah's poetic phrase of God's word not being placed in the world in vain, Isaiah 55: 11). Where did the letters go? They ascended to their 'root' and awaited their return to our world at the proper moment. That moment appeared with the giving of the second Tablets. Some commentaries see this link between the letters of the first and second Tablets from the verse in Exodus 34:1, in which God tells Moshe, " and I will write on the (second) Tablets the words which were on the first Tablets."

Now it is curious- did all the letters return? And if so, when? Even a cursory glance alerts one to minor, yet striking differences between the words of the first and second Tablets. There are an equal or greater number of each of the Hebrew letters in the second Tablets with the exception of the letter Kuf. If one meticulously counts the letters of the first Tablets ( the letters that were in exile) one finds that all the letters are accounted for in the second Tablets, except one! While there are six Kuf's in the first Tablets there are only five Kuf's in the second Tablets. What happened to the sixth Kuf?

Interestingly, the sixth Kuf in the first Tablets is found in the word Sheker, meaning falsehood, in the prohibition against false testimony. The word for false testimony in the second Tablets is Shav . That Kuf, the Kuf associated with falsehood, in fact did not come back with the giving of the second tablets! It was the lone holdout- awaiting its moment to return to Scripture, to the Jewish people and to the world at the time of Esther and Mordechai when the Jews acceptance of Torah was considered to surpass the acceptance of the Torah at Sinai. The expression for this acceptance is found and highlighted in the Book of Esther 9:27 in the words* Kiymu ve Kiblu a double use of the exiled Kuf . The Kuf of falsehood is inscribed in the words signifying the everlasting commitment of the Jewish people to the Torah.

*Thanks to Rabbi Avraham Trugman for this connection to the Kuf of Purim