Gematria - EDCP 442, Assignment 3, Ben and Tim

Gematria - EDCP 442, Assignment 3, Ben and Tim

The topic we chose for our Assignment 3 inquiry and art project was a traditional Jewish numerology called Gematria. It was, and still is, used by certain Jewish rabbis to exegete their scriptures. It is not found in every Jewish tradition but is most closely associated with a particular mystical branch of Judaism called Kabbalah. This hermeneutical technique begins with assigning each letter in the alphabet with a number. In the diversity of the Jewish tradition, this is done in many different ways however we focused on one of the more common methods knowns as מספר הכרחי (Mispar Hekhreḥi, normative value or essential number). In this method, the numbers start at one, increase by one each time until 10, then increase by 10 each time until 100, and then increase by 100 each time until the final letter. This is shown in the chart below. The number of a word or phrase is determined by simply adding all the numbers of each letter together. Once this number is determined, connections can be made specifically about the number itself, or between other words or phrases with the same number. 

An example of the number itself being used is in an interpretation of a passage in Genesis 32:4 which reads, “Thus said your servant Jacob, "I have sojourned with Laban, and I have tarried until now” (גַּ֔רְתִּי). The phrase “I have sojourned” works out to the number 613 (י‎+ת‎+ר‎+ג‎ = 10+400+200+3 = 613) which is the number of commandments in the Torah. One rabbi (Moses ha-Darshan) takes this to mean that though Jacob sojourned with Laban who was wicked, he kept all 613 commandments while doing so. 

An example of two words that share the same number being intertwined is the connection made between Elohim (אלֹהים) and ha-teva (הטבע) which have the same number: 86. Elohim is one of the divine names for the God used in the Hebrew bible, and ha-teva means nature. The resulting idea that nature exhibits the will of the Divine is commented on in the Pardes Rimonim which is one of the central texts within Kabbalistic tradition. An example of Gematria working in reverse (i.e. beginning with a number and leading to a word) is the well known ‘mark of the beast’ number found in the Christian Bible: 666. This is the same as the number for “Nero Caesar” when put into Hebrew letters. Roman emperor Nero was quite well known for persecuting Christians, so this use of Gematria may have been to criticize him without being caught. The authors of the Christian Bible were Jewish themselves, so it’s no surprise they may have known of and used Gematria. 

In our project, we used the same normative value method of Gematria on our English alphabet but since there are 26 letters compared to 22 in Hebrew we continued the count until 800 for ‘z’. We then found the numbers for each word in the preamble of the BC School Act (the closest thing we have to scripture as teachers) and compared those numbers to the numbers of the one thousand most common words in the English language. We noted connections that seemed interesting and thought provoking. A few highlights were: 

• ‘Learners’ shared the same number with ‘connect’,  ‘repeat’, and ‘past’.

• ‘Democratic society’ was the number 1492 which is the year Christopher Columbus first sailed to the Americas… make of that as you will.

•  ‘Fulfilled’ = ‘found’

For our physical art project, we printed the preamble for the act and stained the paper with tea and coffee to make it look old. We then hand wrote in the numbers and added in the connections we found to make it look as though this was some old scroll that we were analyzing and exegeting with notes in the margins and words circled or underlined. Both of us have Jewish ancestry which drew us to this particular topic and this was a fascinating look at the way math, scripture, and interpretation intermixed within this Kabbalistic Jewish tradition. 

Our Artwork:

References:

Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (2013, October 18). gematria. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/gematria

Clawson, C. C., (1996). Mathematical mysteries: The beauty and magic of numbers. Springer Science+Business Media

Derovan, D., Scholem, G., Idel, M. (2018, June 11). Gematria. Encyclopaedia Judaica. https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/gematria

Gematria (2013). (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press.

Lesser, L. M. (2006). Book of numbers: Exploring Jewish mathematics and culture at a Jewish high school. The Journal of Mathematics and Culture, 1(1), pp. 8-31

Varady, A. N. (2021, October 2). Great Nature and the Gematria of Elohim. Aharon's Omphalos. https://aharon.varady.net/omphalos/2012/10/great-nature-and-the-gematria-of-elohim#footnote_3_1347