There are Hebrew letters found in the Torah scroll called “Otiot Meshunot,” unusual, atypical, whimsical, and beautiful. Around 600 CE, Hebrew scribes, following the combined efforts of thousands of scribes, working over hundreds of years, the “Masoretes," (literally “conveyors of tradition”) developed a system of vowel and stress marks that also precisely fixed or established the pronunciation and thus the meaning of the Hebrew Bible text. If you have chanted Torah you know these are “the vowels,” niqudot. What you might not know are the “Otiot Meshunot,” the unusual letters. They are visual Midrash. In this episode of ETZ Talks, we will discover the visual language of these "Extraordinary Hebrew Letters.”

Peretz Wolf-Prusan is a printmaker, storyteller, and rabbi. He served Congregation Emanu-El, San Francisco, as rabbi and senior educator for 20 years, followed by ten years with KehillahSF and Lehrhaus. He lives in Berkeley and continues teaching with New Lehrhaus, Hebrew lettering, and printmaking.  For a dozen or so years he did whatever Abra Greenspan told him to do.

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