by Asher Meth

In October 1985, Asher Meth of New York University posted an elegant mathematical observation to net.religion.jewish. Starting from a teaching of Rabbi Yochanan quoted in the Talmud (Megillah 31a) — "Any place you find the greatness of HaShem, you will find His humility" — Meth shows that the gematriya of the Tetragrammaton encodes this paradox directly. The multiples of the divine name grow without limit, yet their distilled numerical essence (the mispar kattan, or "small counting") descends steadily toward one. The post is brief and joyful, a scrap of mystical mathematics from the early Usenet era, preserved because it does exactly what the best Dvar Torah does: finds the infinite in the particular.

I heard an interesting thought from Rabbi Yitzchak Cohen (a 9th grade rebbi, teacher, at Yeshiva University High School, NYC).

In the "Veyeeten Lecha" passages said at the conclusion of Shabbos, the last section begins with a passage in the name of Rabbi Yochanan (quoted from the Talmud, Megillah 31a): Rabbi Yochanan says, Any place that you find the greatness of HaShem, you will find His humility.

Rabbi Cohen quoted an explanation that interprets the passage as follows. Take the gematriya (numerical equivalent) of the name of HaShem, whose four letters are Yud (10), Kay (5), Vav (6), Kay (5). Note that the Hebrew letter with value 5 is the Hay. However, we do not spell out this four-letter name as one would actually pronounce it; thus the common change to saying "Kay" instead of "Hay". The gematriya, sum of all the letters, is 26. Now take the mispar kattan — small counting — of this sum; i.e., keep taking the sum of the digits until the result is less than 10. For 26 the result is 8.

This four-letter name is known as the Shem Havayah. In English it is known as the Tetragrammaton.

Take multiples of this numerical value 26, and compute their mispar kattan values. We arrive at the following table:

Look at this relationship! The greater we multiply the name of HaShem, the smaller the "result" becomes. This is what Rabbi Yochanan was saying — the greater the name of HaShem, the more humility is expressed.

It is taught that we are supposed to emulate HaShem. How? By emulating his actions. One might think that the closer one is to an important person, the better he knows him — the haughtier he should be, the more of a big-shot he becomes, the more clout he now pulls. We are taught the opposite — the closer one comes to HaShem, the better one knows Him, the more humble one must become.

May each one of us, in his/her own way, emulate the attributes and actions of HaShem in a more positive fashion. May we then merit the coming of the Mashiach, speedily, in our days.

Colophon

Written by Asher Meth (New York University) and posted to net.religion.jewish on October 31, 1985. The teaching of Rabbi Yochanan is from Talmud Bavli, Megillah 31a. The insight about the descending mispar kattan was heard by Meth from Rabbi Yitzchak Cohen, a teacher at Yeshiva University High School, NYC.

Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026. Original Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

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