Yesh Li Blog: The Number 13

Showing posts with label The Number 13. Show all posts

Friday, January 13, 2012

So. It's Friday the 13th. So, what?

Friday the 13th. Big deal. The day and the number have gotten a bad rap for a long time. Yet Friday is beloved as the end of the work week, and do not Christians believe an event of universe-shattering proportions took place on Good Friday?

We have dealt previously with the number 13 here and here. Far from being unlucky, it has many praiseworthy qualities and connections.

One is in its connection to the Hebrew word love, ahavah, which has the numeric value of 13.

The word echad, one, also has the value of 13. It is said this alludes to the 13 attributes of God's compassion revealed to Moshe.

The United States had its original 13 colonies.

Our flag has 13 stripes.

Furthermore, it is said that "God is one" and "God is love," and adding the numeric values of ahavah and echad, we come up with 26, which happens to be the number of the Tetragrammaton, the ineffable Name of God.

I think those things are pretty good—lucky, you might say.

Lucky 13.

There are many 13s on the Dollar Bill, for example the stars...

...the stripes...

...the arrows...

...the leaves-berries...

...the letters (of Annuit Coeptis)...

...and the rattlers, among others.

For more than you wanted to know about the number 13, check out MysticalNumbers.com.

For a plethora of interesting mathematical facts about the fascinating number 13, check out this site.

Friday, May 13, 2011

Triskaidekaphilia!

Eschew Triskaidekaphobia.

Give Triskaidekaphilia a chance!

13 is a lovely number.

Check it out here and here.

13 is a Lovely Number!

If 13 is an unlucky number, why is the great "Love" chapter of the Christian scriptures 1 Corinthians 13 and its 13 verses?!

By the way, the numeric value of the Hebrew word for Love (Ahavah) is 13.

1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant

5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;

6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.

7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.

9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part,

10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.

11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.

12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians 13

Why Yesh Li Blog?

Why do I have a blog? Quite simply, I have a blog to share my favorite things with others. The right side of the blog has a long list of links to some of the places on the Internet that I visit often. In addition to sharing those with others, I often come here myself to find a quick link to where I am going.

Bonnie, our eldest, led the way into blogging with her Simple Beauty Blog, and later with her extremely popular Beans Blog. I decided I would give blogging a try and thought "I have a blog" might be a clever name, but in English it sounded rather lame, so I did it in Hebrew, a language I love more and more the more I learn it.

What does Yesh Li Blog mean?

We would translate (i.e. interpret) yesh li blog to mean "I have a blog" in English, but the literal Hebrew means "There is for (or to) me a blog." You cannot literally say "I have" something or other in Hebrew. It is always "there is for me," or "there is for you," or "there is for us," etc. Hebrew, the language of the Bible, is showing us that we are really stewards of what has been provided for us and for our use. Rather than private ownership, perhaps a better term for what we "own" would be private stewardship.

Languages have been my passion since at least the fourth grade, when I studied Spanish from a library book called Fun with Spanish. In high school, I was the rara avis that became enamored of Latin. In later U.S. Navy tours of duty in Spain, Italy, and Japan, we did our best to learn the local languages. Along the way, I studied some Russian and picked up some Greek by studying etymologies and some Chinese by studying Japanese writing systems.

My first introduction to Hebrew was in the early 1980s, when I took a correspondence course, but it was not until the past decade that my primary focus has been on this wondrous language. It has been deeply rewarding, and especially in the past few years since we met Ori, an amazing Israeli woman, who has become not only my primary Hebrew mentor but also our good friend. Moreover, the small group of people who meet weekly to study Torah in Hebrew in Boulder have become dear to us and enriched our lives greatly. Further, reading Jewish commentaries on the Web of the weekly Torah portions has deepened my own faith and opened up new understandings of the scriptures we share and of Christian writings based on those scriptures.

The pursuit of words has been an essential part of my life for many years (since birth?). Many things have changed in my life, but I don't see that part of it changing any time soon (until death?). Lehitraot! Shalom, Chaverim!