[Avodah] ENDING ON A GOOD NOTE

[Cantor Wolberg]

The very last letter of the Torah is lamed and the very first letter is beis. 
The two letters together form the word Lev, "heart."

In order for the heart to be complete and whole, there is no break between the end of the Torah and the beginning.  Bereshis follows D'vorim with no interruption.
If there were a break, it would break both the heart of the A-mighty, as well as the Jewish People.

Now, in reverse, you would have "bal" (bet, lamed) meaning "don't" or "not". 

Going in the natural order, we complete D'vorim and immediately begin B'reishis, thus we have the lamed of "Yisroel" and the beis of "B'reishis."  When you change the natural order and go in reverse, then you get "bal" which is a negative—"Not". We must not change the natural order of things, and we should follow the order of the Torah and "NOT" reverse it. 

The last word of the Torah, Yisroel, and the first word of the Torah, B'reishis, both contain a yud, shin, reish and aleph. If there were a lamed in B'reishis, it also would spell Yisroel. I thought of the following cute d'rash regarding no lamed in b'reishis:  The word Yisroel contains the first letters of the Ovos and Imahos: Avraham, Yitzchok, Ya'akov, Sara, Rivka, Rochel and Leah. 

The word B'reishis contains the letters of all but Leah. If you recall, Ya'akov was supposed to have married just Rochel, but he was tricked into first marrying Leah.  So for B'reishis, there is no lamed for Leah, because Jacob wasn't supposed to have married Leah. However, as history would have it, Jacob did marry Leah and hence the last word of the Torah also contains her initial.

Richard Wolberg
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