=From Rabbi"Benjamin Blech=

::Hebrew comes with "secrets" far more numerous than the usage of acronyms. the most intriguing, perhaps, and the one least acceptable to the western mind, simply because of unfamiliarity, is the code of gematria. It may appear as a amere game to take note of the fact that two totally different words, when translated into the language of numbers- for very Hebrew letter also bears a numerical equivalent- share the same total and hence have a relationship. THe Hebrew word for child, ילד, for example is 44. Of course, that 44 is the sum of a father אב=3 and a mother אם=41. It is not simply a man and a woman, sperm and egg, that have merged; it is the numerical essence, the gematria, that is as powerful as genetics in the act of creation.