This past sunday evening I went with my wife and 1-month old son to Crown Heights to see Rav Ginsburgh give over a three-part Shiur relating the number 137. I was blown away by the talk and these amazing new ideas in understanding Torah through math – things that I wonder if Chazal even knew about, or if this Chasidut is literally new Torah, as Chazal tell us כי לעתיד לבוא, “תורה חדשה מאתי תצא - that sitting in this room we were truly getting a taste of the times of Moshiach.
I have read some of Rav Ginsburgh’s books and even went to a Shiur last year, all of which have taught some really amazing things in amazing ways, but there was something particular about sunday evening – probably sparked by my interest in the mathematics combined with the topics – that made the experience somewhat exhilarating.
At the Shiur I took notes, which are rather scattered, but I want to try to convey what I learned from the notes and memory as best as I can. You can probably access a video of the shiur in a couple weeks from now on http://www.inner.org.
Ok, so I mentioned that the shiur is on the number 137. Here’s a wikipedia link about this constant: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-structure_constant. (Regarding the number being actually fractional/irrational, see here: http://www.inner.org/responsa/leter1/RESP13.HTM) The number 137 is also the Gematria of Kabbalah (קבלה) and I as continue through the notes we will Bezrat Hashem find some other amazing significance in Torah.
The first topic of the Shiur was called “The Jewish Nation of Womanhood”. I arrived during the end of this one, but here’s what I have:
In the Torah there are only two places where חוה (Chava – Eve) is mentioned by name. By contrast אדם – the first man – is mentioned numerous times. The first Chava in the Torah is Bereishis 3:20 – “The man called his wife Eve, because she had become the mother of all the living”. The next place is four verses later at 4:1 – “Now the man had known his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain saying, ‘I have acquired a man with Hashem’”. Rav Ginsburgh pointed out that the two places that the Torah refers to Chava relates to Leah and Rochel. He also pointed out that the number 137 has to do with a going from one to two (my notes are not very clear).
Kabbalah is a feminine concept. We already said the Gematria of קבלה (Kabbala) is 137, but it’s value by taking the sum of it’s ordinal numbers (ק=19, ב=2,ל=12,ה=5) is 38, which is 19+19. We also find the Gematria of חוה (Chava) is 19 and since it appears twice in the Torah is also 19+19=38. Here is already an association between Chava and 137 as well as Kabbala relating to Womanhood.
Taking this further (and where for me is very exciting), if you take all of the letters from the first mention of Chava to the second mention of Chava, you will find that there are 256 letters:
256 Letters From Chava to Chava
The very fact that there are 256 letters is something significant since that is 16². In Kabbalah, square numbers have a particular significance. Since it is a square number, it is possible to lay out the letters in 16 rows of 16 letters each as in the above picture. Keep in mind this picture is of all of the letters in the Torah from the first mention of Chava to the last mention of Chava so this is Hashem’s word telling us something about the essence of Womanhood. Taking the 16 letters from the top-right corner to the bottom-left and adding up the values of the letters (חילםויחשעלוהמהה), we get 613 – the number of Mitzvos in the Torah. Now, where’s 137? Taking each corner letter (חיהל) as well as each middle letter (אהחחםיוו – there are two middle letters for each row/column since there are an even number of letters in each), we find that the sum of the Gematrios of these letters is 137.
I wish I could say more about the concept of Leah and Rochel relating to all this, but I am not remembering the complete concept. I think when the video is posted on inner.org the interested reader of this blog post should find it.
The next topic was titled “Marital Harmony & Peace in the Home” and Rav Ginsburgh spoke about Shidduchim (marriage matches) and the Isha Maskelet (intelligent woman). He introduced the topic saying that there are three places in the Tanach where there is a mention of a Shidduch that was explicitly stated to be through the hands of Heaven. He pointed out that while we understand that Hashem is control of everything, an area where it is particularly visible is in the case of marriage matches.
The three places in Tanach are:
- Torah – the marriage of Yitzchak and Rivkah – a kosher marriage
- Nevi’im (Prophets) – the marriage of Shimshon (Samson) and the Philistine woman – not a kosher marriage, but still from Hashem (as a means of taking revenge on the Philishtim)
- Ketuvim (Writings) – a match regarding an Intellectual Woman from Hashem (ומה’ אשה משכלת) – even better than the 1st (Yitzchak and Rivkah) – an Intellectual Woman is a gift from Hashem – you cannot inherit an intelligent woman – The Posuk in Mishlei 19:14 says “A house and wealth are an inheritance from fathers, but an intelligent woman comes from Hashem”.
First of all, what does it mean “Intelligent Woman”? Rav Ginsburgh explains: What more is there to Intelligence than Torah and Mitzvos? The answer is: To be able to convert every mundane act into service of HaKadosh Baruch Hu. There is no more secular. To see Hashem is in everything and is everything. A marriage includes some mundane activities, but the Intelligent Woman views everything as service of Hashem.
Let’s examine the term describing an ideal marriage – אשה משכלת. First of all אשה (woman) has a Gematria of 306, which is divisible by 3, so 306=102*3. The number 102 is the Gematria of אמונה (faith) as woman is related to “three pillars of faith”. The whole phrase אשה משכלת is 1096, which is divisible by 8. 1096/8 = 137. So there is 137 again – relating to the intelligent woman and the concept of the ideal marriage. Once again this concept of a spectral line split into two as two partners in marriage are considered two parts of a whole.
At this point he began to discuss more about the number 137. He pointed that that 137 is the 34th prime (counting 1 as the first prime). He pointed out that there is no way to know the specific number of a prime (i.e. the 34th) from the prime itself. He then went on to explain a fascinating idea: An electron can be a particle that is in orbit around the nucleus of an atom. The nature of an electron can be best described by the Hebrew word אופנים(Ofanim – literally “wheel” as in the wheels of the Divine Chariot). The Gematria here is once again 137 (Although my notes do not say, I assume this is referring to the singular אופנ). He then talked about the word אגל to refer to something that is both a “drop” and a “wave” – alluding the the particle/wave duality concerning photons – and so אגל can refer to a photon. The Gematria of אגל is 34 – as in 137 being the 34th prime.
I have in my notes that the Rav talked about how “There is no absolute zero…” and although I would like to elaborate on that, I do not remember what he said specifically.
I have four more pages of notes where things get very interesting using the digits of 137 as a series, and the expanding universe, and how 137 relates to the concept of a king… I am going to stop for now and Bezrat Hashem continue some time.
In the meantime, there are some very nice articles at the link below:
http://www.inner.org/torah_and_science/mathematics/index.php