Last Thursday, Rabbi Yoshi and I led our last weekday morning service of the year with the fifth and sixth graders in Wise School. Since all of the students already participated as klei kodesh (service leaders) and/or darshan (Torah teacher), Rabbi and I opened up the time after prayer for the students to ask questions. Some of them were silly, some of them were serious, and many of them had questions about the symbolism of numbers in our tradition, perhaps in an attempt to connect their Jewish and secular studies and also as a means of finding symmetry and balance at the end of a long, creative, and—certainly at times—exhausting semester. It was fun to explore their questions and comforting to reassure them about the beauty and meaning behind numbers as they appear in our texts and rituals.
After this discussion and throughout my entire weekend, I took special notice of the numbers that added light and meaning to multiple Jewish ritual moments. On Friday afternoon, I officiated a wedding where each spouse chose to break the glass at the end of the ceremony, increasing the number of glasses (and the joy in the ceremony) twofold. The following evening, I officiated a wedding at which the bride and groom chose to do the seven circles before the chuppah, each circling their soon-to-be-spouse three times and then joining in one final circle together as a representation of balance and a reflection of God’s creation as they stood there to create a new Jewish family. And on Sunday afternoon, I blessed a new daughter of our community with her Hebrew name, and her parents proceeded to explain how the baby was born on the sweetly even 4-24-24, and how both of their daughters’ names add up to 42 in Hebrew gemmatria, which was their way of understanding that their girls were destined to grow up together and support each other forever.
Everywhere in our tradition, numbers enhance our understanding of our life experiences and, in the most remarkable of moments, they may be a way for us to understand the Divine presence in our lives. Tomorrow, I’ll turn a bright and shiny thirty-seven, a happy milestone I welcome and a number I intend on embracing all year with my whole heart, God willing. And even if there is no particular meaning to the numbers we encounter throughout our days, may we open our eyes to simply noticing, and may we embrace the many blessings before us, great and small.
— Cantor Emma Lutz