Discussion

It was after having listed the states in Table 1 when I realized the significance of the Number of Letters in the Torah. It appeared, however, that this very number has some relation to the phenomenon. Looking at the Table, I got the impression that the Number of letters in the Torah acts as a sort of sieve – retaining the safe states above the mesh and letting the other names pass down. I should state immediately that this is NOT a method of measuring the righteousness of whole peoples or individuals. This is just a phenomenon of ENCODED NAMES OF STATES and otherwise EVENTS that have to take place long after the Torah had been given to the Jews.

Here is a good example, in my view, to support this concept. Historically, Britain consists of three peoples: English, Welsh and Scottish.

The three countries, independent kingdoms long ago, and having their own distinguished languages and ethnic characteristics, give the results summarized in the table below. Evidently, no one of the constituents of Great Britain, taken separately, would fall among the safe states. All three countries show “worse” results than Germany! But how could a person be “bad” as, say, an Englishman, in the same time being “good” as a British? However, there is a historical reason even in this case. England hadn’t been showing goodness to Jews centuries ago. On July 18^th 1290 (Tisha B’Av, the 9^th of Av, when the Temple had been destroyed twice in the past!), King Edward I signed a decree banning all Jews to live in England where they have been dwelling for almost 200 years [10]. It was after adopting the name Britain in the 17^th century when this island became tolerable to Jews and even later, as an Empire, becoming a champion of human rights. In the terms of the code, Britain with one (and only!) interception with Israel pins the nation on a high position in Table 1.

This example shows that God is in control of the whole human history. So, there are no grounds for boasting. As Jeremiah the prophet wrote, “’but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth, and knoweth me, that I am the Lord which exercise lovingkindness, judgement, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight,’ saith the Lord” (Jer. 9:24).

The first three states in Table 1 yield intersections at their lowest ELS-s. Interestingly, they represent the three main Christian denominations: East-Orthodox (Bulgaria), Catholic (Ireland) and Protestant (Iceland). Accidentally, these three states represent also the three major ethnic branches of Europe: Slavic, Celtic and Germanic (Nordic) peoples, respectively. This phenomenon has not been observed with any of the other plain-text names (Tables 3 to 15).

A date could be revealed encoded in a peculiar way in Table 1. I noticed that the P for Jerusalem, 168,000, is almost perfectly on the half-way between P for the first state in the list above the “sieve” – that for Bulgaria (9,576) and P for the first state below the “sieve” – that for Germany (327,117). If Bulgaria’s P is subtracted from that for Jerusalem,

168,000 – 9,576 = 158,424

and the difference is added to 168,000

168,000 + 158,424 = 326,424

the obtained sum is smaller than P for Germany (327,117). The amazing fact, however, is that the difference is exactly

327,117 – 326,424 = 693.

693 is the year of the sixth millennium according to the Jewish calendar (5693) that corresponds to 1932/3 of the Christian calendar – the year when Hitler rose to power! He was appointed Chancellor on January 30^th 1933. Some historians mark this year as the beginning of the Holocaust.

Among the states in the “safety zone”, some were neutral (Turkey, Switzerland, Sweden and Ireland), some formed the backbone of the anti-Nazi coalition (Britain and America), some were too remote geographically (Iceland). Three of them, however, have been under German control during the war. But while Albania was ceded to the Italians, who hadn’t been enthusiastic in the Holocaust, the task of Bulgaria and Denmark was very hard indeed. Both states did their best and coped, Bulgaria especially, perfectly. In fact, Bulgaria appeared to be the only state under German control where the Jewish population increased during the war [11]!

Although my intention was to confine the phenomenon to the limited period of 1941-5, it should be noted that some of the safe states during the war such as Spain and Portugal, haven’t been always safe and well disposed to Jews. On the contrary, Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492. Many of the Bulgarian Jews are descendants of the Jews expelled from Spain (Sephardim) finding their new home in the Ottoman Empire[1]. As for Finland, I was much surprised to read that the Finnish government (Finland was a German ally during the war) agreed to hand over their Jews to the Germans. It was after realizing that 11 of them had been killed when the government refused to hand over the remaining Jews [12]. Finland, however, is regarded as safe state and no death toll was found cited anywhere.

There is a curious fact about expulsions of Jews from AD 1000 – 1500 that I found in Martin Gilbert’s Atlas. The states mentioned there are: England, Wales, Lithuania, France, Germany, Silesia (with the area around Krakow in modern Poland), Austria, Provence, Hungary, Crimea, Portugal, Navarre, Spain, Sardinia, and Sicily [13]. None of these countries, still existing in the 20^th century, has been found in the “safe zone”, i.e. with P-s less than the number of letters in the Torah.

Table 2 provides information about the potential of each encoded name to get a place in the upper compartment. Tables 2A and 2B illustrate how these potentials are made the most of on the examples with Israel and Sons of Israel, respectively. Distinguished patterns in each case could be easily recognized: higher potentials match much better a place in the upper compartment in the case of Sons of Israel. Indeed, among the first 13 names (listed in decreasing order of potential) in Table 2A (Israel), which is the half of them – Jerusalem is not counted – only 6 fall above the line, while in Table 2B the names of this kind are already 9.

It is also significant that among the 23 states, 11 different names occupy the top place in the 14 Tables with intersections. Only three of them: Albania, Turkey and Hungary happen to occupy twice a top place in different Tables. This fact points out to a comparatively even distribution of the intersections among the names, showing that there are no “privileged” individual names and thus strengthening the evidence of a phenomenon in the case of Israel. It is true that 9 times out of 14 the top place is occupied by a safe state (ratio 9:5). In relation to the compartment occupied in Table 1, however, this ratio becomes 8:6 in favour of the names with P-s lower than 304,805 in Table 1 (Finland, the name on the top in Table 14, is below the line in Table 1.). These names occupy also very different places in Table 2. The most striking cases are those of Belgium and Britain. The former has the next-to-the last potential in Table 2 but leads Table 6; the latter is 21^st in potential out of 27 names but leads Table 5. Among all names that have the potential to qualify for a place in the upper compartment, Spain is the only one that has never had such a chance.

Tables 3 to 15 contain the results obtained with intersections with Sons of Israel, Egypt, Abraham, Moses, Aaron, Isaac, Jacob, land, the land, Adam, sons, king and Pharaoh, respectively. Frequencies of occurrences of the investigated names in the Torah are as follows:

Israel is the fourth name by frequency, after those of sons, land and Moses, and second by length, together with Egypt and Abraham. If all words are added up to make a broken string, the longest one will be that for the sons (children):

3?1,172 = 3,516.

This is about 15% higher than the corresponding value for Israel:

5?591 = 2,955.

However, if the two adjacent letters at both sides of the word are added, the overall length turns out to be

7?591 = 4,137.

This number is third in value after those for sons (children) and land. It is higher than the corresponding ones for Sons of Israel and Moses (3,760 and 3,680, respectively) and much higher than the remaining overall lengths. This fact suggests that it is a good choice even from statistical point of view, giving, under equal other conditions, best chances for intersection.

The overall numbers of letters corresponding to the words in the plain text and the two letters enclosing them are summarized as follows (listed in the order of decrease of the latter):

I tried, but, notwithstanding to some extent the statistical behaviour due to the number of letters, I couldn’t find any link between a specific intrinsic feature of a name of a state and its P. Let us consider the number of letters. There are four 4-letter words. All of them are below the “mesh”. At first glance, it seems they are doomed to be there. But it is not so. France is in third position in Table 4 (intersection with Egypt) and third or fourth in Table 7 (intersection with Aaron). As for the 5-letter words, among the 7 states only Denmark and Switzerland fall within the upper part of the table. Although the results for these two states are not conclusive, both will retain their places most probably in the same positions, but definitely above the line. Denmark, however, gives way to the Vatican in Table 2. Switzerland, in its turn, gives way to all the other 5-letter-states in the same table! This should mean that Switzerland, with its least potential, gets second position among 7 competitors in Table 1. Among the 11 6-letter states, 7 are above the line and 4 are below it. With the Sons of Israel, there are even more above the line (8); some exchanges of places, however, having taken place – 2 of those that were above the line in Table 1 fell below it (Ireland and America), while 3 (Germany, Romania and Finland) rose to find places in the upper part of Table 3. Only Italy appeared to keep its place below the line in both tables. An interesting fact I have found about America is that it is the only state above the 304,805-line in Table 1 whose lowest intersection with Israel falls in the book of Genesis. (There are two more states that give their LIELS-s in the book of Genesis: Lithuania and Holland.). What is more, America gives the lowest P, calculated for the intersection with Israel, in the book of Genesis (see Part 2)!

Here is the place to discuss an amazing fact that I found about Switzerland, which, I believe, confirms the phenomenon. Switzerland appeared to be the only state in the dictionary that has an alternative, 8-letter spelling (ש ו ו י צ ר י ה ). I performed the whole research with this spelling. The result is, that it gives only one intersection with ISRAEL at ELS = 19,466 and no intersection with any other name in the plain text. P for the intersection with ISRAEL is 6?19,466 = 116,796. Although this alternative P is about two times smaller than the one included in Table 1, the outcome in terms of the code is the same! If Switzerland was taken using the alternative spelling, it would displace only Denmark in Table 1 and that’s all!

Considering the data in Table 1 only, one may conclude that an intersection of a 7-letter state means that it would very likely find a place in the “good zone”[2]. It is true that, due to comparatively low frequencies, the 7-letter states could expect lower P-s, but Jerusalem and Palestine change their places in Table 3. Generally, the number of letters means almost nothing in a preliminary assessment of expected values. The differences between the 4-letter Hebrew names of Spain and France are only in the first and the last letter. The middle ones are the same but transposed. Spain shows a better potential than France (Table 2).In all the other tables, however, France shows lower (“better”) P-s than Spain! Italy, on the other hand, with its 6 letters occupies the 22^nd position in Table 3, left behind by 6 of the 7 5-letter names. France, in Table 4 (Egypt), with its 4 letters occupies (probably) the 3^rd place while in the same table the 6-letter Finland is down in the 24^th position! There are many more examples like these.

Another comparison reveals interesting differences between names similar in number and type of letters. Palestine has the highest potential for intersection with ISRAEL and SONS OF ISRAEL (see Table 2A). Bulgaria’s potential is also relatively high – 4^th. Both states consist of 7 letters; their frequencies are similar (24 and 21 occurrence for Palestine and Bulgaria, respectively) and share the same number of letters with Israel and Sons of Israel. However, in both Table 1 and Table 3, Bulgaria occupies much higher positions than Palestine. Bulgaria and Hungary differ in their 1^st and 3^rd letters only (ב and ל for Bulgaria and ה and נ for Hungary). Their potentials are also similar (Hungary’s is the 6^th). Hungary, however, shows lower results both with Israel and Sons of Israel; it has no intersection with Israel. (Note that Bulgaria’s intersections are different in each case[3].) Interestingly, Bulgaria keeps higher positions than both Palestine and Hungary with Israel, Sons of Israel and Abraham, giving these states way in most of the other cases.

It is Table 1 only that has three states (the first three) at their lowest ELS-s. Among the other tables, Romania is at its LELS in Table 3 (Sons of Israel), Britain in Table 4 (Abraham), Belgium in Table 6 (Moses), America in Table 7 (Aaron) and Austria in Table 10 (land).

Tables 2, 2A and 2B also show how efficiently states have “used” their potentials in a competition with each other for a “better” place in Tables 1 and 3. If the number in the first column of Table 2 is larger than those in the second column (position in Table1), the respective state has performed “better” than the theoretical expectation and vice versa. This performance, however, is a function not only of any state’s own P, but also of the combined performance of all the other states.

We could assess the results only from historical perspective. The events (Holocaust) the whole task was performed in order to predict have already taken place. But even so, the results in Table 1 appear to be most consistent. If we accept the Number of Letters in the Torah as a frame, it comprises reasonable number of names in Tables 1 and 3 (Israel and Sons of Israel, respectively).

[1] Sepharad is a name of a place where some people from Jerusalem were led into exile or taken in captivity by the Assyrian king Sargon in 8^th or 7^th century BC (Obad. 20). Most probably, this place was somewhere to the east of the river Jordan. Among the Jews in the post-Biblical times, however, this name was used to refer to Spain.

[2] A state would definitely fall above the mark in case of intersection only if the number of its appearances is equal to or less than the number of its inter-letter intervals. Among the states in this research, only Austria (2 < (7 – 1)), Britain (6 = (7 – 1)) and Switzerland in the longer, 8-letter spelling, comply with this condition.

[3] Bulgaria appeared to be the only state in the research giving intersections with ISRAEL at her two lowest ELS-s! Both Bulgaria and Iceland yield intersections with SONS OF ISRAEL at their next-to-the-lowest ELS-s. But while Iceland intersects at the letter נ (nun), which would not qualify an intersection with ISRAEL according to the criterion shown on Fig. 1, Bulgaria intersects at ל (lamedh), the last letter of ISRAEL, which is a qualification. Bulgaria gives three intersections with ISRAEL altogether. Since the number of the encoded appearances of Bulgaria is 21, and given that there are 3 intersections, the probability that both two lowest ELS-s are also intersections (IELS) is 1/70 (1.43%).