The Myth of Jewish “Horns” Explained - Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair

The Jewish people have had few advocates and friends as dear and as staunch as Senator Daniel Inouye. Senator Inouye served as a United States Senator [music] from Hawaii from 1963 until his death in 2012. He was a highly decorated World War II veteran >> [music] >> and one of the most powerful Democrats in Washington. Asked why he became such a strong supporter of the Jewish people, >> [music] >> he told of his wartime recuperation from battle wounds in a hospital in Italy. In the next bed, there was a Jewish soldier who'd also been badly wounded. Inouye had never known Jews in his native Hawaii and he'd been taught that as a child that Jews had horns. Well, when they removed the bandages from this Jewish serviceman's head, no horns were visible. The two became friends and from this Jewish serviceman, >> [music] >> Inouye learned of the centuries-old hatred and persecution of the Jews. As a first-generation Japanese American whose family had been discriminated against, this struck a strong chord with Inouye. And when he recovered, he set out to find out why it was that the Jews had suffered so much. His research led him to become a strong supporter of many Jewish causes. He arranged for large American government funds for Israeli defense >> [music] >> and also for religious institutions. So great was his identification with the Jewish people that at one point [music] he considered converting. When asked why he didn't convert, he replied that he felt he could do more for the Jewish people as a non-Jew [music] than as a Jew. But Senator Inouye was not the first to think that Jews have horns. Michelangelo's famous statue of Moses [music] shows the lawgiver with very solid stone horns. The myth of Moses' horns comes from [music] a mistranslation of the Hebrew word keren. Keren can mean a horn, but it can also mean a beam of light. In fact, the Latin word corona, from which the English [music] word crown derives, comes from the Hebrew keren. If you look at the Sefer Torah, you'll notice that the first word of the book of Vayikra, from Leviticus, is written in an unusual fashion. The last letter of the first word Vayikra, the aleph, is written much smaller than the rest of the word. Why is it so small? When God told Moshe to write the word Vayikra, meaning he called, [music] Moshe didn't want to write that aleph. It seemed to Moshe that it gave him much too much importance. How could he write that God called [music] to him? Who was he after all? A mere man. Moshe wanted to write Vayika without the aleph, meaning he, meaning God, happened upon him. In other words, God just came across Moshe, so to speak. He didn't go out of his way to [music] appear to him. Now, in spite of Moshe's protestations, God told him to write Vayikra with an aleph. Moshe put the aleph at the end of the word as God had commanded him, but he wrote it small. The aleph is the letter that represents the ego, the me. It's the first letter in Hebrew of the word I, ani. When a person sees himself as aleph, the big aleph, number one, he's usurping the crown of he who is one. The Torah tells us that Moshe Rabbeinu, Moses, was the >> [music] >> humblest of all men. Moshe saw, as no man before or since, that there is only one aleph in creation, only Hashem. >> [music] >> The mystical sources teach that when Moshe finished writing the Torah, some ink was left in his pen. As he passed the pen across his forehead, the drops of ink became beams of light shining from his visage, his crown, his keren. The extra ink that was left in Moshe's [music] pen was the ink that should have gone to writing that big aleph. Instead, it became a corona of shining light to adorn the humblest of [music] men.