Holiness by the Numbers
by Eliezer Segal
The Torah is not very informative about how it chose the date for the holiday that we celebrate as “Rosh Hashanah,” which has no obvious historical or agricultural explanation.
Among the Jewish commentators who tried to deal with this question was the eminent twelfth-century philosopher, poet and grammarian Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra—who was firmly convinced of the scientific validity of mathematical astrology. His observations appear in his commentary to the brief passage in the book of Leviticus that mentions among the holy days of the calendar the annual “day of the sounding of horns”.
He introduces his explanation as a confidential secret: “I shall be giving to you hints of mysteries. If you pay careful attention, then perhaps you might understand them.”
Ibn Ezra’s exposition is wrapped in obscure mathematical terminology, but the gist of his reasoning seems to go as follows: The principal dates on the Hebrew religious calendar follow an arithmetic logic, coinciding with the beginning, quarter-points and the mid-point (days 1, 7, 15) of the months. Whereas the concluding days of Passover and Sukkot mark the beginnings of the respective fourth quarters of the first and seventh months, the fact that Sukkot has an additional eighth day, while the last day of Passover is the seventh, has esoteric numerological significance.
There is no question that the Torah treats the beginning of the first month, the one that later came to be called “Nissan,” as the real starting point of the religious year. Interestingly, Ibn Ezra derives its importance not from its being the anniversary of the exodus, as mainly from its association with the construction of the Tabernacle, which was completed at the beginning of that month—and will again be the case for the third Temple according to the prophecies of Ezekiel.
The dates of the Spring festivals are parallelled in the Fall. Each of those months is the seventh one since its predecessor, an indication of the special metaphysical status that the Torah assigns to the number seven. “Hence Rosh Hashanah is the greatest of them all” by virtue of its identification with the seventh month.
As it happens, Ibn Ezra was not the first Jewish interpreter to adopt this approach to explaining the Hebrew festival calendar. A strikingly similar theory was professed by Philo of Alexandria, the first-century Jewish philosopher. Philo was strongly influenced by the teachings of the philosophical school known as “neo-Pythagoreanism” which held that the mathematical structure of reality furnishes the basis for a mystical understanding of creation, in accordance with a system called “arithmology.” He reports that he composed a separate treatise to the subject, but that work has not survived.
To the best of our knowledge, Philo and his writings were not known to Abraham Ibn Ezra or his Jewish contemporaries in the Middle Ages; though they were quite popular among Christian scholars who were strongly attracted to his allegorical method of scriptural interpretation. Nevertheless, it would appear that Ibn Ezra had access to translations of ancient neo-Pythagorean works, and that he applied them independently to the study of Jewish texts, producing results that were remarkably similar to Philo’s.
Thus, when Philo discusses the Sabbath in his commentary to the Ten Commandments, he does not focus on its overt themes as a commemoration of the creation or of the liberation from Egyptian slavery—but rather on the significance of observing it on “the sacred seventh day.” The metaphysical, arithmological quality of this primary numeral is what makes it the appropriate key to understanding the many ethical and social laws that are linked to the seventh year, such as the release of Hebrew bondmen, forgiveness of debts, and allowing the earth to rest on the sabbatical and Jubilee years. Multiplying seven by four gives us twenty-eight, which Philo—not quite accurately—identifies as the total of days in a lunar cycle.
Because the world was created in six days, it was fitting for the creator to praise and sanctify the seventh day. Philo rhapsodizes: “I doubt whether anyone could adequately celebrate the properties of the number seven, for they are beyond all words.” He goes on to show how this magnificent number—including its squares, cubes and other derivatives and combinations—reflects patterns of geometry, astronomy (such as the numbers of known planets and of stars in major constellations), the distribution of equinoxes, lengths of biological gestation, stages of personality development, and much more.
The fact that the Torah commands the observance of the major public festivals at the times of the equinoxes, each of which falls in the seventh month since its predecessor, is thus consistent with the logic of nature and with mathematics.
The number ten also occupies an honoured position in Philo’s theory of numbers. He enumerates ten holy days in the Hebrew calendar. These include (1) the sabbath, (2) the monthly new moon, (3) Passover and (4) the feast of unleavened bread (which he counts separately), (5) the day of the “sacred sheaf” (when the ‘omer of barley is offered), (6) the feast of seven sevens (Shavuot, concluding a count of seven weeks); and the holy days of the seventh month: (7) the festival of the sacred moon, or the feast of trumpets; (8) the fast (Yom Kippur) and (9) Tabernacles (Sukkot). The total reaches ten if we accept his assertion that the first festival “is that which anyone will perhaps be astonished to hear called a festival. This festival is every day”!
As a loyal Jew, Philo admired Moses as a prophet, philosopher and lawgiver. But sometimes it seems that his greatest accomplishment lay in the fact that he “always adhered to the principles of numerical science, which he knew by close observation to be a paramount factor in all that exists. Therefore Moses never enacted any law great or small without calling to his aid—and, as it were, accommodating to his enactment—its appropriate number.”
In preparation for the holiday season, maybe we should brush up on our mathematical skills—if only to count our blessings.
First Publication:
- The Alberta Jewish News, September19, 2024, p. 39.
For Further Reading:
- Rodríguez Arribas, Josefina. “Significance of the Equinoxes in Abraham Ibn Ezra’s Cosmology.” Helmantica 175 (2007): 115–40.
- Chayutin, Michael. “Misṭiḳat Misparim ba-‘Olam ha-‘Aṭiḳ (ba-Miḳra, bi-Mgillot Ḳumran uve-Khitvei Philon).” Beit Mikra: Journal for the Study of the Bible and Its World 144, no. 1
- Kreisel, Howard (Haim). “Abraham Ibn Ezra’s ‘Secrets’ in the Early and Later Torah Commentaries.” Jewish Thought 2 (2020): 35–64.
- Langermann, Y. Tzvi. Jews and Pythagoreanism: New Gleanings from a Long-Standing Association (Paris Presentation), 2023.
- ———. “Some Astrological Themes in the Thought of Abraham Ibn Ezra.” In Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra: Studies in the Writings of a Twelfth-Century Jewish Polymath, edited by Isadore Twersky and Jay Harris, 28–85. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.
- Moehring, Horst R. “Arithmology as an Exegetical Tool in the Writings of Philo of Alexandria.” In The School of Moses: Studies in Philo and Hellenistic Religion: In Memory of Horst R. Moehring, edited by John Peter Kenney, 191–227. Brown Judaic Studies ; Studia Philonica Monographs, no. 304. Atlanta, Ga: Scholars Press, 1995.
- Robbins, Frank Egleston. “Arithmetic in Philo Judaeus.” Classical Philology 26, no. 4 (1931): 345–61.
- Schwartz, Dov. “R. Abraham Al Tabib: The Man and His Oeuvre.” Kiryat Sefer 64 (1992): 1389–1401.
- ———. Studies on Astral Magic in Medieval Jewish Thought. Boston: BRILL, 2004.
- Sela, Shlomo. Astrology and Biblical Exegesis in Abraham Ibn Ezra’s Thought. Ramat-Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 1999. [Hebrew]
- Staehle, Karl. Die Zahlenmystik bei Philon von Alexandreia. Leipzig: Verlag und Druck von B.G. Teubner, 1931.
- Zhmud, Leonid. “From Number Symbolism to Arithmology.” In Zahlen- Und Buchstabensysteme Im Dienste Religiöser Bildung, edited by Laura V. Schimmelpfennig and Reinhard Gregor Kratz, 25–45. Studies in Education and Religion in Ancient and Pre-Modern History in the Mediterranean and Its Environs (SERAPHIM). Mohr Siebeck, 2019.
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