Episode 3: Ana B'Koach

So what they don't tell you at Sunday school is that Judaism is full of sorcery.

Judaism is full of magic and incantations even.

Anaba Koach is a prayer that doubles as a mystical incantation.

It itself includes a 42-letter name of God.

And indeed, the existence of the prayer owes itself to the fact that in the Talmud, there's this interesting text.

It says, hey, everyone, there's a 42-letter name of God.

And the Talmud knows how to do great clickbait because it doesn't actually tell you what the 42-letter name of God is.

And that means that we, in later generations, have to come up with it.

And so, anabekohach is a prayer that exists to try and solve that puzzle.

And it consists of 42 words, exactly 42.

It's seven sets of six words.

And...

Each of the first letters of those words, when you put them all together, is said to constitute that 42-letter name of God.

It begins with, And the first three letters are, For those of you who know the Hebrew Alephbet, the Hebrew alphabet, you'll notice that those are the first three letters in the alphabet.

So there's kind of a hidden message in this prayer that every time we say Aleph, Beth, Gimel, every time we start the alphabet, we are also channeling a name of God.

We're starting to bring this 42-letter mystical name.

That's part one of the magic of this prayer.

There's more, though, because that's just about the letters and what they might mean when you put them together.

There's also the word.

There's also the content of what it says.

And the content of this prayer speaks deeply enough to me that it lives on my ring finger at all times.

This is a prayer that my wife found a ring with the words, with the first six words on it, to give me for life.

an engagement ring.

This is the ring that I use to signify my marriage to my wife, Valerie.

And on it, it says, the first six letters of this beautiful prayer.