Book Review: Tanach Notes by David Pack

Reviewed by Nikolas Mavreas

An extensive numerological argument justifying the existence of the state of Israel

There exists a long tradition and common practice in Judaism of applying numerology to the interpretation of scripture. This specific kind of Jewish numerology, specifically built upon the Hebrew language, is called gematria, a word most likely derived from the Greek words for geometry and letters, or literature.

In its simplest application, the practice of gematria points to connections between words or verses that are assigned the same numerical value. In Tanach Notes, David Pack performs much more elaborate versions of this exercise, combining and truncating, adding and subtracting, even taking square roots of all kinds of quantities, dates, words, names, and verses found in the Torah, which consists of the first five books of the Tanach, the Jewish Bible.

Along with the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, it is the Book of Esther that is taken into major consideration in Pack’s analysis. It may seem out of place until we consider, as Pack does, that Maimonides, the revered medieval Jewish theologian, in the section Laws of Megillah and Chanukah contained in his Mishneh Torah, said that the Book of Esther will be the only one of the Holy Writings, next to the books of the Torah, whose truth will survive the Messianic Era.

Opening the book is one of the most straightforward of Pack’s arguments, in which he accounts for the verses in the Tanach where the plea “Fear not my servant” is made to Jacob in a context related to the end of days, which Pack takes to mean the Messianic Era. He finds the sum of some gematria values related to these verses to be 5708, which is the year of the Hebrew calendar corresponding to 1948, the year Israel was founded.

Some slight permutation of the sentence “5708 is the year the modern Jewish State of Israel was founded” is to be seen on nearly every page of the book, following a unique calculation of gematria operations that has yielded that number. Tanach Notes is characterized by such great commitment, which testifies to the author’s full and unwavering conviction. The author, who is at times overreaching, may fail to convince the more skeptical, but adherents to his cause will not be disappointed.

Here is another, more convoluted example of Pack’s calculations. God names Jacob Israel in the 1022nd verse of the Torah, while in its 3564th verse God says “I will remember the land,” which Pack takes to be an allusion to the establishment of Israel. Joseph was the son of Jacob, and the gematriot values of Joseph and son are 156 and 52, respectively. Jacob had 3 names, whose gematriot values are 182, 188, and 541. Sum all these numbers up and you get 5708.

In the back of the book, we are provided with a gematriot value dictionary and a long, complete index. With Tanach Notes, Pack has carried off an amazing amount of work, and it is hard to think of a more complete, more meticulous numerological analysis of this idea. As fervent as it is comprehensive, Tanach Notes is a resource that will impress and provide value to those invested in the practice of gematria.

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