Jewish Gematria
The phrase "Jewish gematria" is used for two related things: the traditional practice of assigning numbers to Hebrew letters, and an English cipher called Jewish English that copies the Hebrew pattern of units, tens and hundreds.
Gematria has a long history in Jewish writing. Rabbinic literature, medieval commentaries and Kabbalistic texts all contain readings based on the numerical value of Hebrew words. It is one interpretive method among many, and how much weight it carries differs between communities.
Traditional Jewish gematria
In the traditional form, every Hebrew letter has a fixed value, and a word is read by adding its letters. Well-known examples include chai (life), which totals 18, and the midrashic link between Abraham's 318 men and the name Eliezer, which totals 318. Our examples guide shows the arithmetic letter by letter, and the Hebrew gematria page lists the methods and the full letter chart.
The Jewish English cipher
Online calculators also offer a cipher called Jewish English. It gives the first nine letters of the English alphabet the values 1 to 9, the next nine the values 10 to 90, and the last eight the values 100 to 800, the same shape as the Hebrew units, tens and hundreds.
Because the values climb into the hundreds, totals are much larger than in the ordinal ciphers. For example, L (30) + I (9) + G (7) + H (8) + T (200) = 254.
Which one should you use?
- If you are working with Hebrew text, use Hebrew gematria.
- If you want a Hebrew-style total for an English word, use the Jewish English cipher.
- If you want small, easy numbers, use simple gematria.