I was looking at an old typefounder's specimen book
(H. Berthold, 1924, Berlin), and in a sample of Hebrew
text I noticed a character I've never seen before. It
appears to be a ligature of some kind, perhaps aleph
and lamed? I have scanned in an image to this site:

http://www.marlboromats.com/Hebrew1.jpg

I would be grateful if someone could enlighten me.

Thanks,
Phillip Driscoll