Gematria: Jewish Mystical Kabbalistic Numbers

Shalom! I am Rabbi Jonathan Ginsburg. This video is really good for Math people. It is about Gematria, which a kind of secret Jewish system for delving into the various significant parts of Judaism and ideas based on numbers. Now, the theory here is that the Hebrew alphabet is very holy. There is an old legend that God made the World using the Hebrew alphabet. In every letter of the Hebrew alphabet has a numerical coefficient. The first letter Aleph is equal 1 and second letter Bet is 2, Gimel is 3, Daled is 4, Hei is 5, Vav is 6, Zayin is 7, Heth is 8, Teth is 9, Yodh is 10, Kaph is 20, Lamed is 30, Mem is 40, Nun is 50, Samekh, Ayin and Pe, Qof etc. A Qof then becomes 100, Reish is 200, Shin is 300 and the last letter Tav is 400.

And, then what you have to do is every time you are going to spell out a word, you figure out it is coefficient. The most famous example of this is how we get the idea of 613 commandments. So Moses got the Torah, well if you spell out the word Torah you get 611 Tav is 400 Vav is 6, Reish is 200 and Hei is 5. The story that God spoke the first 2 commandments, but the people was too hard to hear them so ask Moses to give them the rest 2 plus 611 equals 613. The most famous Gematria, which many Jewish know is that of Hei the word for life is equal to 18 that is because it consist of 2 letters Heth is 8 and Yod is 10. And, what people would do is they will take the various words and they would climb with their numerically equivalent and then they would find another word, which has the same numerically equivalent and find a relationship between the two or if you take Yod Hei Vav Hei for example, the name of God and you find that it equals 26, you can find a lot of things that would have 26 and what their significances. I give you one example; and this is you do not have numbers for these in the Shammah which is the soul and Mishna which is the early law of the same weathers. So, if you did the number of course you could see that they have a new same numerically equivalent.

But, it was really a way that the Cabolist and the mystics down into aspects of the Torah in Jewish material and but that is what the Gematria is and it is use, mostly today by Jewish mystics. Some people have a lot of fun with it just trying to de duce, we take a number and then you find the Hebrew word that corresponds to that and you go for blessing based on that word. The idea very basically of Gematria.


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