Two Torah Trivia By The Numbers

A couple of Torah-related numeric brain teasers appropriate for this time of year.

1) Here's one I heard from my Zaidah, A'H, concerning the upcoming Parshas Shmini, which was his bar mitzvah parsha exactly ninety years ago! The name of this parsha, which is read this year on the Shabbos right after Pesach, means "eighth". And in fact, in some years the first aliyah [portion] of Shmini is, in fact, read exactly eight times. How is this possible?

2) This one is original and, if I may say so myself, is my all-time favorite Torah brain teaser because it requires knowledge of algebra, halacha, and Hebrew grammar to get the one-and-only-one correct answer!

Beginning the second day of Pesach, we count the "omer", a forty-nine day period between Pesach and Shavous. The omer is counted in both days and weeks - e.g., "today is nine days, which are one week and two days in the omer".

Now there is exactly one day of the omer in which the Hebrew wording used for the day count and the week count are exactly parallel. To illustrate, here's a fake example: "hayom arba u'sheloshim yom, shehaym arba shavous u'shlosha yamim laomer". As illustrated by my color coding, the words used in the two phrases counting the days and the weeks respectively match up in order: arba and arba, shloshim and shlosha. Obviously, this example is fake because the 34th day of the omer is not four weeks and three days. But there is exactly one omer day where this does come out right!

Of course, the correct answer can be found by the brute force method of simply reading through each day (boo!) so in order to get this one right you have to show the math!

Have fun with these. I'll be on blog-cation until after the holiday. So a chag kasher v'samayach, a happy and kosher Pesach to all my Jewish readers. And to my gentile readers, just plain happiness!