Politics
Peer offers Kabbalah lesson to House of Lords in ode to the Queen
Lord Wolfson linked Queen Elizabeth's age to gematric value of 'mitzvah'
September 14, 2022 14:21
Lord Wolfson linked Queen Elizabeth's age to gematric value of 'mitzvah'
September 14, 2022 14:21A Jewish Lord offered up a surprising Kabbalah fact while heaping praise on Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
The former justice minister, Lord Wolfson linked the death of the late monarch at age 96 to Jewish mystical thought in his ode to her on Friday.
Addressing the House of Lords, the Tory peer and former Yeshiva student offered peers a short course in gematria, the practice of assigning numerical values to words, originally used by Hebrew and Greek cultures.
He initially explained how the word “mitzvah,” does not simply mean a good deed done at will but one with roots in the Hebrew letters tzaddik and vav.
“Her late majesty spent her whole life doing the right thing, and not just because she felt like it, or because the mood took her,” he stated.
“She spent her 96 years doing the right thing day in and day out, out of a sense of duty.”
He then highlighted that gematria, a system devised by Kabbalah experts, found that the numerical total for the word mitzvah equals 96.
“In one of those coincidences, which perhaps are not, the value, the numerical value of the Hebrew word tzav, the root of the word mitzvah is 96 — 96 years of tzav, of duty, and also of mitzvah of doing the right thing, because that is your duty,” he went on.
The Baron of Tredegar, who resigned from Boris Johnson's government in April over the Partygate scandal, also explained that the annual reading of the Torah in synagogues is almost complete.
He then compared how synagogues begin reading the Torah over again as soon as the annual reading is finished, just as the mourning of a British monarch is accompanied by the welcoming of a new one.
“We’ve closed one book, a long and good book which we’ve had with us for so many years, and we are about to open another.
“And as we all pray that God save our King, I will also pray that he too may enjoy a reign of mitzvah of doing the right thing, for that now is his duty,” he said.
“And so tomorrow for the first time in my life, we will not pray in synagogue for Prince Charles, but for King Charles.”
“I started yesterday as a Queen’s counsel, and I finished it as a King’s counsel,” he lamented.
Wolfson’s fellow parliamentarian Lord Polak also paid tribute to the Queen druing Friday’s debate, also levelling searing criticism at the Foreign Office for preventing her from visiting Israel.