Like the Greeks, the Hebrews used letters from their alphabet to represent numbers, so every word had a numerical value. This could be used to interpret the hidden meaning of words. For instance, Gulf War participants might have noticed that Saddam has the following value: samech (60) + aleph (1) + daled (4) + aleph (1) + mem (600)=666—a number that Christians associate with the evil Beast that appears during the Apocalypse. (Whether “Saddam” has two daleds or one would make no difference to the kabbalists, who often used alternate spellings of words to make sums come out right.) Kabbalists
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