Rabbi
Elazar ben (son of) Chisma said: The laws of the bird-pair offerings
and the beginning of menstrual periods: these are essential laws.
Astronomy and the numeric values [of the Hebrew letters] are the spices
to wisdom.
This mishna enumerates a number of subjects and evaluates their worth
in relation to the Torah. The bird-pair offerings refer to the Temple
sacrifices a woman must bring shortly after childbirth (as well as in
other situations). Detailed discussions exist regarding the offering of
these sacrifices, cases in which the offerings of different women became
mixed up, and what types of stillbirths obligate the offering of these
sacrifices.
Menstrual periods refer to the calculations necessary to determine
the expected start date of a woman’s period, as well as the relevant
restrictions when her period begins or is expected to begin. This
includes what types of blood indicate a menstrual flow, deviations from
the normal cycle, off-cycle spotting, blood spots found on clothing,
etc. These subjects may be a little less appealing to the budding
scholar, but they are essential areas of Judaism crucial for the proper
maintenance of the Jewish home.
(In our mishna’s words one almost hears echoes of the pagan notion
that such “women’s laws” are somehow less holy and deserving of rabbinic
attention. Such phenomena as menstruation reflect women’s innate
impurity or their affliction by evil spirits. Our mishna unequivocally
rejects such absurdity.)
Astronomy and numeric values, on the other hand, are not Torah per
se, but are subjects which complement the Torah — as does almost every
area of wisdom. The area of astronomy referred to here (and most often
dealt with in the Talmud) is the calculation of the cycles of the moon
and the seasons. Although basically mathematics, this field is essential
for formulating the Jewish calendar, whose purpose in a word is to
reconcile the discrepancy between the lunar months and the solar year.
Each holiday must fall out in its proper season — Passover in the
spring, Sukkos (Tabernacles) at the ingathering of the crops, etc., and
so the lunar year (12 months of approximately 29.5 days = 354 days) must
continually be reconciled with the solar year of approximately 365.25
by adding days or months to the lunar year.
‘Numeric values” (“gematriya” in Hebrew) refer to the assigning of
number values to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. (I.e., alef = 1,
bais (or ‘bet’) = 2, gimmel = 3, etc. After the tenth letter, yud, the
counts increments by tens, and after the nineteenth, by one-hundreds.)
Through this, all Hebrew words and phrases can be associated with
numeric values. Certain forms of rabbinical homiletic interpretation are
based on inferences made from these values, and occasionally, a
decision in Jewish law will be based on (or at least corroborated by)
such an inference.
Two simple examples follow. The Talmud (Makkos 23b) infers that the
Torah contains 613 mitzvos (commandments) based on the verse “Moses
commanded us in the Torah…” (Deut. 33:4). The word “Torah”, as it
appears in the verse, has the “gematriya” of: tes (400) + vuv (6) +
raish (200) + hai (5) = 611. Thus, implies the verse, Moses taught us
611 mitzvos. That combined with the tradition that the first two of the
Ten Commandments were heard directly from G-d at Sinai gives us a total
of 613.
Elsewhere, the Talmud (Nedarim 32a) infers that Abraham first began
to comprehend the existence of a single G-d at the age of 3. It derives
this from Genesis 26:5: “Since Abraham hearkened to My voice…” “Since”
is in Hebrew “aikev” = ayin (70) + kuf (100) + vais (2) = 172 — implying
that Abraham hearkened to G-d for 172 years. Thus, since Abraham lived
till the ripe old age of 175, he must have begun at the tender age of 3!
As our mishna states, both astronomy and gematriya have their place
in the Torah. “Essential laws” they are not, but in a way they help
demonstrate one aspect of the Torah’s beauty — as may be seen from other
disciplines — as well as (in the case of gematriya) illustrating the
hidden wisdom of the Hebrew alphabet.
Today we have a modernized approach to the study of numbers in the
Torah. It is know as the Torah Codes, or ELS — the study of Equidistant
Letter Sequences in the Torah. The concept is that if one takes the
words of the Torah as a long string of letters (without spaces between
words) and searches at regular intervals (taking e.g. every 50th
letter), he will find significant words and messages hidden within the
text.
As a simple illustration, Rabbi Eliyahu Kramer, the Vilna Gaon (of
18th Century Lithuania, universally considered the greatest Torah
scholar of his age) was once asked that being that all future events are
alluded to in the Torah, where can one find a hint to Maimonides? He
pointed to Exodus 11:9: “…in order to magnify My wonders in the Land of
Egypt.” Now, Maimonides is universally known as “Rambam” in Hebrew (the
letters raish – mem – bais – mem), the acronym of Rabbi Moshe ben
Maimon. Further, the words quoted above are as follows in Hebrew:
“re’vos mofsai b’eretz Mitzrayim.” If we take the first letter of each
word in this phrase we spell — raish – mem – bais – mem = Rambam! That
together with the fact that Maimonides was a wonder who lived much of
his adult life in Egypt (as few great Torah scholars did), we have a
hidden but discernible hint to the sage in question.
(This is admittedly a slightly different tactic — taking the first
letters of adjacent words as opposed to equidistant letters. However, I
wanted to use this example because we will return to it next week, G-d
willing.)
More recently, using computer technology, scholars have discovered
that there is no other place in the Torah in which this four-letter
sequence appears at the start of adjacent words. Needless to say, the
Vilna Gaon was pretty smart!
I would now like to leave the remainder of this discussion for next
week. We have a long way to go. However, I’d like to offer an important
disclaimer before we close. Many of you probably know that much
controversy surrounds the issue of the Torah Codes — both their validity
and their statistical significance. I myself, after having been
enamored with the topic years back, have resigned myself to the fact
that far and away the majority of statisticians (hopefully most of them
sincerely) reject their mathematical basis. They may well indicate
something of the Torah’s divinity, but I, in my relatively uninformed
opinion, cannot imagine ramming them down the throat of the uninformed
in order to “prove” that we’re right. The Torah has more than enough
proofs of its authenticity to the intellectually honest. There is no
need to employ shaky methods to further corroborate G-d’s infinite
wisdom.
Regardless, my readers are welcome to research the topic for
themselves on the Web; there are still a few sites out there devoted to
the debate. (Old websites almost never go away, though they look very
dated.)
In any event, before we continue next week, let me state that I am
not writing this piece in an effort to convince anyone of the validity
of the Codes or to weigh in with my own uninformed two cents. I am
neither great rabbi nor great statistician. The controversy in its time
has had its share of acrimony and mud-slinging (rather curious for what
ought to be a scientific debate), and people far greater than myself
have angrily and vociferously stated their opinions.
However, I would like to approach this issue with a different thought
in mind. I feel the Codes touch on an even more fundamental issue to
mankind today: Has modern man progressed “beyond” the ancient wisdom of
the Torah, however advanced and innovative it was in its time? Has
societal and technological advancement made the Torah archaic and
irrelevant to modern man? Does the Torah have anything to say to a race
which has created computers which effortlessly perform billions of
floating point operations every second, which at every moment of the day
sends trillions upon trillions of bits of information instantaneously
around the globe? Next week, G-d willing, I hope we will shed some light
on these issues.
Text Copyright © 2009 by Rabbi Dovid Rosenfeld and Torah.org.
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