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Gematria is form of cipher used to generate a numerical equivalent for a Hebrew word, which sometimes is invested with symbolic meaning. For example, the gematria of "chai" (the Hebrew word for life) is 18, and multiples of 18 are considered good luck and are often used in gift giving.
According to The Jewish Daily Forward, its use as an amulet originates in 18th century Eastern Europe. [1] Chai as a symbol goes back to medieval Spain.Letters as symbols in Jewish culture go back to the earliest Jewish roots, the Talmud states that the world was created from Hebrew letters which form verses of the Torah.
The word itself is a hapax legomenon (i.e., a word appearing only once in a text) of the Hebrew Bible. In Yiddish, the term mazalot came to be used in the sense of "astrology" in general, surviving in the expression "mazel tov," meaning "good fortune." [4]
[3] [4] Nor do the biblical texts necessarily represent the beliefs of all Jews or Christians at the time they were put into writing: the majority of the texts making up the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament in particular represent the beliefs of only a small segment of the ancient Israelite community, the members of a late Judean religious ...
The more recent moai had pukao on their heads, which represent the topknot of the chieftains. According to local tradition, the mana was preserved in the hair. The pukao were carved out of red scoria, a very light rock from a quarry at Puna Pau. Red itself is considered a sacred color in Polynesia.
[11] The understanding that the original Hebrew was difficult and was not likely to actually mean "horns" developed during the Renaissance. [ 12 ] The cultural historian Stephen Bertman argues that Jerome is known himself to have held antisemitic views, and may have made the choice to associate Moses with "horns" consciously for theological ...
The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh is the Jewish scriptural canon and central source of Jewish law. The word is an acronym formed from the initial Hebrew letters of the three traditional subdivisions of the Tanakh: The Torah ("Teaching", also known as the Five Books of Moses or Pentateuch), the Nevi'im ("Prophets") and the Ketuvim ("Writings"). [19]
The Shekhinah (Biblical Hebrew: שכינה šekīnah; also Romanized Shekina(h), Schechina(h), Shechina(h)) is the English transliteration of a Hebrew word meaning "dwelling" or "settling" and denotes the dwelling or settling of the divine presence of God. This term does not occur in the Bible, and is from rabbinic literature. [47]: 148 [48] [49]