Maths and God

[yakalskovich]

There is an utterly fascinating articel on Telepolis, a German online magazine:

Es geschehen noch Zahlen und Wunder (Helmut Merschmann)

http://www.telepolis.de/tp/deutsch/inhalt/co/17378/1.html

Die Ausstellung "10+5=Gott" im Jüdischen Museum Berlin geht dem

Mysterium der Zahlen nach

I am very sorry they only have that German version of the article. It's about an exhibition at the Jewish Museum in Berlin, about the magic and mystery of numbers - beginning with the qabbalah, but continued to the most contemporary of maths.

One interesting tidbit I'd like to share with those that don't speak German: as in most numeric systems before the Arabic numbers, the ancient Jewish people used letters for numbers. The name of God, which was forbidden to be wirtten or spoken (as at least everybody knows who's ever watched "The Life of Brian", let alone suffered formal education in this sort of thing) was comprised of letters the numeric value of which was 10 and 5 respectively. So, if you tried to write "15" by writing 10+5 as was to be expected, you'd commit terrible blasphemy. So, people wrote 9+6 instead...

Comments

[wiebke.livejournal.com]

In one of my all-time favorite books, The Chosen by Chaim Potok, there's a big scene involving a Hasidic Jewish rabbi going into an amazing lecture based on the magic of numbers, how the sum total of each of two words adds up to the same total as one word. The lead character of the book, who has "head for math" enjoys this even though his father has told him such calculations are meaningness, like horoscopes (or LJ quizzes, he he).

[yakalskovich]

Yes, that's just what that article is about - but it extends that tradition into mordernity and shows how important the Jewish contribution was to modern mathematics. You, luckily, have the German to read it.