Gematria, the body, and this blog...

This blog is named (as I'm sure you know), Capitol Chai Life. Capitol is an allusion to the US Capitol building, located here in Washington, DC. Chai Life is a double entrendre, playing on the phrase "High Life", and on the Hebrew word for life is, which is, well, Chai.

Now Chai is spelled Chet-Yud, which also represents the number 18. Consequently, 18 is considered a powerful and positive number in Judaism. Donations are often made in multiples of 18 for example, with double chai (36) being very common.

Now consider the human body, in particular our hands and feet, fingers and toes. With one hand, I can count from zero to five. If I use the fingers of my other hand to represent complete iterations of the first hand, now I can count from zero to thirty-five. If I use the toes one one foot, now I am up to 215, and using the toes on the other foot, I get up to 1,295.

So what's the connection?

With two hands, I get to double chai, less 1 (35 = 36 -1 = 6 x 6 -1 = 6^2 -1) and with both hands and both feet, I get to double chai squared, less 1 (1295 = 1296 - 1 = 36 x 36 - 1 = 36^2 - 1 = 6^4 - 1).

Furthermore, even though we only counted to 1,295, we have actually counted 1,296 numbers, since zero, although the absence of anything, is in fact something.

OK, I'm a math geek. I think it's neat.