Hasn’t everybody heard that just before people die — provided they’re lucid — their whole life flashes before them?
None of us has been there to confirm or deny, but the statement defies all sense.
Least of all, because there’s not enough time in a “flash” for much of anything, let alone a whole life.
More to the point, if you try writing an autobiography, you’ll discover how much you’ve forgotten, misremembered or re-colored to fit your current perspective.
I haven’t written an autobiography, but I’ve dipped my toes into the water, and seen the risks of inaccuracy in life-flashes. Permit me to back into this.
For years I’ve noticed that numbers pop up in the Torah and Talmud, pretty much on every page. At some point I began to note the instances of individual numbers on the inside cover page of Jewish books where the numbers appeared. Then, as time went on, I noticed that I had covered many of my books and Talmud volumes with lists of numbers.
I’m not talking about numbers in legal (halachic) contexts (how long a shofar sounds need to be, for example). I’m talking about numbers that populate the fantastic or imprecise tales and images in midrash and aggadah, and numbers in historical incidents and ethical lessons in the Torah.
About six years ago I decided to attack the topic systematically, to try to figure out whether numbers in Torah and Talmud convey a message. For example, when it’s written in the Book of Numbers that Balak urged Baalam to make 42 animal sacrifices to persuade G-d to enable Balaam to curse the Israelites, would it have made a difference if he had offered sacrifices 41 animals or 43? Is there a message in 42 sacrifices? Is 42 just an arbitrary choice, or does it convey a message?
To answer the question about 42 and all other numbers in Torah and Talmud, I figured that if I could gather up all the contexts in which a number is used, I’d have a good chance of discerning whether there is a common denominator among them. So I set out on a journey to extract from the Hebrew Bible (the whole Tanach, not just the Pentateuch) and from the entire Talmud each instance of a non-halachic number. I’ve gathered thousands of instances.
I can’t remember a research project I’ve ever engaged in that was so much fun — so much so that it didn’t seem like research at all.
Obviously, over the large span of the entire Hebrew Bible and Talmud I must have missed some numbers. But, as I say, I did gather a few thousand instances, and I did indeed discern a common denominator, a distinct message, in each number.
I noticed other things, too:
Most numbers have a primary meaning and a countermeaning (an opposite meaning).
Some numbers are exaggerated and some are absurd, and there is a distinction between the two. An exaggerated number, for example, is troop strengths in ancient Israel. They are way too large to be realistic. What is the meaning of an exaggerated number?
Here is an example of what I call an absurd number (from midrash on the Scroll of Lamentations): the population of ancient Israel before the destruction of the First Temple was 24 x 24 x 24 x 24 x 24 x (600,000×2) x 24. That number – trillions of inhabitants — is beyond exaggeration. It is not to be taken literally or even figuratively. It is absurd. What is the message of an absurd number, and how might one decipher it? To figure that out, I asked myself, why doesn’t the midrash just say, “trillions of inhabitants?”
Once I discerned a message in a number I said to myself: The message of a number in Torah and Talmud must carry over to human experience. If a number signaled a message in antiquity, then that same number can potentially signal something in my life, too. If a number is really a code for a message, then I ought to be able to discern that message in my own experience. I ought to be able to correlate the message of the number with episodes in my life or in the lives of people I’ve known.
So I asked myself: If I look at significant experiences in my life, or at experiences I’ve witnessed or been a part of in other people’s lives, could I summarize them with a number from Torah or Talmud?
In other words, do the Torah and Talmud teach not only via the words they use, but via the numbers they use?
I think the answer is yes. I’ve been looking back at select significant experiences I’ve lived or witnessed that can be correlated with a number. In the process of this iconoclastic autobiographical project, I’ve seen straight out: I forget. I misremember. I re-color. Not necessarily to save myself from embarrassment or to burnish my self-imagine. Forgetting, misremembering, re-coloring just happen with the passage of time. Not only is it impossible for one’s “whole life” to flash before one’s eyes, it is extremely difficult for even a single experience long ago to flash before one’s eyes as it was experienced at the time. I’m not talking about how, when the event took place, I might have perceived it from a biased point of view. No, I’m talking about retrieving the event even through my biased spectacles at the time.
Can one’s whole life “flash before you?” Color me skeptical.
© IJN 2026
