How does jewish gematria work

jewish gematria is an ancient system of using numbers to gain insight and meaning from words and phrases. This system has been used for centuries by Jewish scholars as a form of onomastics, or the study of names. Gematria works by assigning a numerical value to each of the letters in the Hebrew alphabet. Once each letter is given a numerical value, words can be numerically broken down and analyzed in order to unlock their hidden meanings.

The calculation of Jewish gematria begins with assigning a numerical value to all 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, beginning with "Aleph" (א) representing 1 all the way through "Tav" (ת) representing 400. Thus, any word or phrase written in Hebrew may be assigned a total numerical value simply through mathematics - adding together the numerical values of each letter appearing in the word or phrase.

For example, "shalom" may be broken down into its component letters: shin (ש), lamed (ל), vav (ו), and mem (מ). The numerical values are shi(300), lamed(30), vav(6) and mem(40). Together their values equal 376 – this is how Jewish gematria works!

The system does have its critics who argue that it leads to mere coincidence rather than uncovering any true meaning within words or phrases. Nevertheless, studies have focused on certain meaningful words whose numerical equivalents provide many potential interpretations – and these interpretations offer powerful insight when seeking guidance from religious texts such as the Bible or Talmud.