I like to play around with gematria, a kind of playful reflection on Jewish letter/number coincidences. Each letter of the Hebrew alphabet has a numerical value – aleph is 1, bet is 2, etc. Therefore, every word in Hebrew has a numerical value often shared with another word.
So, when I am asked, “What if?”, I am wont to translate to Hebrew and then check the gematria. “What if” comes out to “Mah im?” “Mah” (what) comes out to 45. Forty-five is the also the numerical values “adam” – “human being.” And if you turn “im” around (another kind of word play in Hebrew), it comes out as ״ma,” an alternative spelling of “mah” – “what.”
“What if?” (mah im?), therefore, comes out in the game of gematria as “What is the Human Being?” Well, the human being is obviously one who plays. There is actually a book about that, Homo Ludens: The Play Element in Culture, by Johan Huizinga. It is a deep and fascinating book, having us see culture as characterized by, inter alia – repeated, rule-bound activities that bear meanings and consequences.
The High Holy Days, at some level, are about the rules of this often-heartbreaking game called life, and what happens when you break those rules. For example, what happens when you break the hearts of other people, or when you break the heart of the Divine? Yes, God has a heart, and we break it.
How do you heal a broken heart, whether yours others’ or God’s? There is a way to heal, and you will find it in the sacred play of the High Holy Days.
Mordecai Finley is a psychologist and a rabbi at Ohr HaTorah in Los Angeles. www.rabbifinley.com
