who knows fifteen?

fifteen is one of the numbers that is a name of God in hebrew and so is not written as yod + heh (10 + 5) but tet + vav (9 + 6)

&

15th is middle of the lunar month - full moon - lots of festivals in the hebrew calendar
15th of Nisan is Pesach
15th of Av is Tu B'Av -
15th of Tishrei is Succot
15th of Shevat is Tu B'Shevat - New Year for Trees
15th of Adar is Shushan Purim
15 steps in the Temple
15 Shir Hamalot - song of ascents - in the book of Psalms
Latin America: age a girl becomes mature - quinceanera

a 15 sided polygon is called a Pentadecagon

(day 15 is the beginning of the 3rd week of the omer - hence the triangle. The first week was like day 1, the barley was arranged in a circle. The second week was like day 2 - a line. So this week is like day 3, a triangle)

who knows fourteen?

(the echud me yodea - who knows one - song is over, now we are on our own...)

14 are the parts to the pesach seder (the song may have finished but we haven't left the seder)

&

chapters in Rambam's Mishna Torah
date in Adar of Purim
date in Nissan of the fast of the first-born
no. of days (& nights) in a fortnight
pounds in a stone
lines in a sonnet
encoded within Bach's music
and the number of stations of the cross

a 14 sided polygon is called a Tetradecagon or Tetrakaidecagon. and I am wondering just how many more polygons I can draw in this size before it basically becomes a filled in circle.

(apologise for the image quality - had to use phone to take this pic. will scan it in properly tomorrow)

who knows thirteen?

thirteen are the attributes of God

&

Rambam's principles of faith
the real number of tribes of Israel: Reuben, Judah, Shimon, Levi, Dan, Naftali, Asher, Gad, Issachar, Zevulun, Ephrim, Menasseh & Binyamin
number of bulls offering on the first day of Succot
number of months in a leap year in the hebrew calendar
13th Adar - fast of Esther
13 petal rose - book by R. Adin Steinsalz about kabbalah - from the zohar, Israel is like a 13 petal rose
age a boy becomes Bar Mitzvah
last verse of the song "who knows one...."
Shlomo took 13 years to build his palace (the temple only took 7.5 years...)
13 Archimedean polyhedra
locusts apparently swarm every 13 years
unlucky number
Friday the 13th
fear of 13 is called triskaidekaphobia

if 12 is a complete complex unit, then 13 takes it one step beyond the ordinary

who knows twelve?

twelve are the tribes of Israel

&

sons of Jacob
loaves of showbread on the shulchan
stones on the Hoshen, high priest's breastplate
no of stones Eliyahu used to make the altar for God at Carmel
age a girl becomes Bat Mitzvah
no of springs of water in the wilderness after marah
months of the year, signs of the Zodiac
hours of the daytime, and hours of night
dozen
12 inches to a foot
humans have 12 cranial nerves and 12 ribs
a Force 12 wind is a hurricane
Heracles had 12 labours
Odin had 12 sons
King Arthur had 12 knights around the round table (including himself)
Jesus had 12 apostles
Christmas has 12 days
12 Angry men
12 step programme in AA
and 12 points is the maximum score in the voting in the Eurovision Song Contest

twelve is a complete complex unit

who knows eleven?

eleven are the stars in Joseph's dream

&

Apollo 11 - space mission of the first humans on the moon
7:11 ratio of the Great Pyramid
3:11 ratio of the moon to the earth - squaring the circle

there is something not of this world about the number 11

a Hendecagon (11 sided polygon) cannot be constructed using a compass and straight edge - unlike all the polygons so far. so this is the first drawing that was a bit of guess work and a lot of trial and error.

who knows ten?

ten are the ten commandments

&

ten utterances of creation - the sephirot,

generations from Adam to Noah, and from Noah to Abraham

Abraham's tests & numbers of times Israelites tested God in the wilderness

ten plagues

ten days of repentance, leading to Yom Kippur on the 10th

minyan - quorate for prayer

ten martyrs mentioned on Yom Kippur

tribes of the Northern Kingdom, that become the lost tribes

tithing of procedure

no. of fingers on hands - base 10 counting system, decimal system

10 Downing Street

who knows nine?

nine are the months before a baby is born...

&

the nine days of mourning leading up to the 9th Av that commemorates destruction
nine muses
nine circles of Dante's hell
cloud nine (highest level of cloud)
nine lives of a cat
and K9 - Dr Who's robot dog
in base 10, the digits of all multiples of 9 eventually sum to 9 - (I still remember learning that in school and thinking it was magic)

artistic creativity, heaven & hell, birth & destruction, cats &

dogs. all in a magic prime number

who knows eight?

are the days to a brit milah
&
8th day the mishkan was dedicated
8 days of chanukah
garments of the High Priest
Shemini Azeret - 8th Day of Assembly, conclusion of Succot
Josiah, Yoshiayhu - the perfect king, was 8 when he become king
spiders, octopus
8 x 8 squares on a chessboard
octave
byte = 8 bits (binary pairs)
Super-8 film
After Eights
Terry Pratchett's Discworld

who knows seven?

days of the week

&

days of creation
no. of each kosher animal on the ark
seven species in the land of Israel: grapes, figs, dates, pomegranates, olives, wheat, barley
seven prophetess: Sarah, Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Abigail, Huldah, Esther
seven sisters
visitors on Succot: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, David
colours in the spectrum (according to Newton - there are only 6 really)
seven seas & seven continents
James Bond 007
seven Endless: Destiny, Dream, Death, Despair, Destruction, Desire, Delirium

who knows six?

six are the orders of the mishna

&

star of david
cities of refuge
6-day war
legs of an insect
crystal structures: snowflake, carbon, graphite, quartz
honeycomb
six degrees of seperation
smallest perfect number
sixth sense
six-pack

who knows five?

five are the books of the Torah

&

the number of kings that Abraham fought
no. of clothes that Joseph gave to Benjamin
dimensions of the altar (its length and width)
no. of rabbis in Bnei Brak in the hagaddah
the senses: sight, sound, taste, smell, touch
limbs of the body: 2 arms, 2 legs + 1 head
the golden section
no. of platonic solids:
pentatonic scale

who knows four?

four are the mothers: Sarah, Rebecca, Leah and Rachel

&

Jacob's women (Leah, Rachel, Bilhah & Zilpah), mothers of the children of Israel
rivers from Eden
exiles: Assyria, Babylon, Greece, Rome
beasts on the heavenly chariot in Ezekiel's vision
Pesach: cups, sons, questions
the no. of rabbis who entered the Pardes, & the 4 levels of PaRDeS, layers of textual analysis
types of death penalty: by stoning, by burning, by strangulation, by sword,
no. of regular priest's clothes
no. of sections of the Tur, a fundamental Jewish legal code
elements of physical world: earth, air, fire, water
seasons: spring, summer, autumn, winter
points of the compass: north, east, south, west
particles of matter: protons, neutrons, electrons, neutrinos

four is making things real, and setting the boundaries and catergories for reality.

who knows three?

three are the fathers - Abraham, Isaac and Jacob

&

myth of the creation of human: Adam + Eve + Lilith
meals on Shabbat,
categories of judgement on Rosh Hashana: Life, Death and In-between

& the Temples: the 1st, 2nd that were destroyed and the one-to-come-(maybe)

no. of days journey to somewhere significant: Abraham + Isaac to the Akedah, and time it takes to walk the length of Nineveh
leadership archetypes of ancient Israel: kings, prophets & priests
hierarchy within the people: Cohenim (Priests), Levites, and Israelites
no. of hours to wait after eating meat before eating milk (if you are british)
& no. of matzot on the seder plate

3 introduces complexity, it is more than the simple choice of either/or

who knows two?

two is the heaven & the earth

&

sun & moon
male & female
Jacob & Esau
Leah & Rachel
Hillel & Shammai
R. Yochanan & Resh Lakish

black & white

2 dots make a line, but I did not know if it was a horizontal line, implying equality, or a vertical line, implying hierarchy. There is a tension within a relationship of two, they oppose, one can dominate the other - oscillating between the horizontal and the vertical modes, hence the diagonal line.

who knows one?

one is God (.. had to be really... )

but one is also me. and you... and you... and all the unique souls out there.. we are all one too

who knows...

here's the plan: each day of the omer I draw grains of barley that correspond to that day, and play about with the meanings of that number and shapes they make. eg on the 3rd day, I'll draw 3 grains of barley, that will give me a triangle. and list the three's that pop up in torah - 3 day journeys, 3 fathers, no. of meals on shabbat etc.

it will probably get a little daft with some of the numbers, and arbitrary. Like the other omer counting drawings of previous years, I have no idea how this will go or what it will reveal. I certainly don't have the time to do this, I struggle keeping up with the daf yomi drawings. But it is an idea that won't leave me alone and I just want to explore this. I have long been fascinated with geometry and the poetry of the numbers in Torah. 

so: who knows one? the omer count begins tuesday night 15th april 2014. hopefully I will be able to cue up this first drawing to post that night. if not I'll post it and day 2 on wed eve. no promises to be able to go all the way through the omer this year, let's see...