[Mesorah] Singletons in Torah

[Dov Bloom]

I don't think there is such a list. At least I have never seen one such (but 
lo ra-inu eino ra'aya).

One way to start such a list in the order of the Torah, would be to go 
through the Messora Ktana, and look for every lamed (leita) - for a word 
that doesn't appear again. Usually this leita will mean this specific 
spelling doesn't appear elsewhere in the whole tanach, but some may be 
"leita be-oraita" found only once in the Torah which would imply it is found 
elsewhere, or leita be-sifra (in this specific book it doesn't reappear but 
it does elsewhere.)

Since my Vayikra is close, I looked and found nine leitas in Vayikra Perek 
1. The last one is really lo yavdil - a word pair that doesn't reappear, 
which would not go onto your list, and at least two of the others are 
hyphenated words or word pairs (et-harosh, min-hakesavim). So part of your 
work is to filter out the "leitas" that don't apply in order to construct 
this list.

Perek 6 of Vayikra, this week's Parasha, has a leita in verse 2 - mokda, 
verse 3 vesamo, verse 9 at the end, verse 10 leita with a kamatz, v 13 has 2 
leitas: the same word machatzitah but once with a vav umachatzitah and once 
without a vav machatzitah - both times with a mapik (will your list contain 
one of these or both?), verse 14 has 3 leitas, v. 15 has 1, v. 19 has 1, 
verse 21 has a leita for a word pair and then three consecutive words that 
are leitas - hapexes -  in a row : maybe this three in a row is some kind of 
record (bushala umorak veshutaf)

Looking for leitas sometimes can be exceedingly tricky because lamed meaning 
leita can mean other wierd things too.
For instance Bereshit 10:1 Vayivvaldu - leita vechol kriah dechavvate bar 
min aleph. Now, if the word is leita, never appearing elsewhere, how can the 
same word in rest of the tanach (kol kriah) be spelled similarly?  What this 
rubric really means becomes a little bit clearer from its title in Ochla 
veOchla #271 - "shita min kaf-aleph milin dechol chad vechad leit basifra .. 
vechol kria dechavate bar min aleph" : this a list of 21 words that appear 
only once (in a specific minority form) in a certain book, while appearing 
more than once in this book in another spelling form. However, in the rest 
of tanach they always take the same form that was a minority of one in a 
specific book. So the simple leita in Messora Ktana can be very tricky.

About Leita - hapex lists in general:

In Ginsburgh's The Messorah you can find under the letter kaf #19 a list of 
over 900 hapexes beginning with kaf, while #26 of letter kaf contains a list 
of nearly 1800 hapexes that _end_ in kaf. Letter lamed #14 gives a list of 
over 1900 words that are hapexes and start with lamed.  Probably you have 
such a list for most letters, though I only flipped through a few examples.

A list of hapexes only from the Torah that you want may be nearly as large a 
whole Tanach Hapex list, because many words may appear twice in Tanach: once 
in Torah and once or more in Nach.

Lists of words that appear twice:

In the Messorah Sofit there are lists such as Bet #8 - A list of words 
beginning with bet that appear only twice (70 or so pairs arranged 
alphabetically); These words have 2 occurances in the whole tanach.
Letter Heh #2 has a similar list of words that begin with heh and occur 
twice .
If you took all these such lists of paired words you will probably find many 
that have one of the pair in the Torah and one in Nach.  These should go in 
your list, but in the Messora Ktana they would not say lamed-leita but bet 
for two.

Happy list constructing!

Dov Bloom (DB the younger)

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gershon Rothstein" <wxyz9876 at optimum.net>
To: <Mesorah at lists.aishdas.org>
Sent: Wednesday, March 16, 2011 3:28 AM
Subject: [Mesorah] Singletons in Torah


> Is there a list somewhere of all words that are found only once in the 
> Torah although they may be found (or a related word with the same shoresh) 
> elsewhere in Nach? If so, can you please share it with me?
> Thanks,
> Gershon Rothstein
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