Dec. 13th is Taylor Swift’s birthday, and this year she turns 36, which in Hebrew numerology, or gematria, is double chai or double life.
In gematria, each Hebrew letter has a number: aleph (1), bet (2), gimmel (3), and so on. The value of chai, which means life, is 18, from chet (8) and yud (10). So what does 36 mean? It is life, doubled. Or maybe, if you are Taylor Swift, it is the life you live and the one you write songs about.
You do not have to be a Swiftie to know Taylor Swift. Even if you only follow pop culture from a distance, she has become one of the defining artists of her generation and a surprisingly profound chronicler of what it means to grow up, fall in love and begin again.
She has lived many lives already: teenage country prodigy, global pop icon, indie-folk poet, and now the mastermind of her own musical empire. More than that, she has become a storyteller in a very Jewish sense, turning emotion into meaning and pain into poetry.
And like the best of Jewish tradition, her work centers on ahavah, love. Not just romantic love, but parental love (“The Best Day”), the ache of childhood (“Fifteen”), the pain of friendships lost (“Breathe”), the enduring love of a grandparent (“Marjorie”), and the love of team and community (“Long Live”). The kinds of love that root us, stretch us and sometimes leave marks that never fully fade.
Her fans do not just listen. They interpret. Every lyric is decoded, every symbol unpacked. It is not unlike Torah study. Just swap Rashi for a Reddit thread.
As I prepared this reflection, something struck me. The Hebrew word ahavah, love, has a gematria of 13.
Aleph (1) + Hey (5) + Bet (2) + Hey (5) = 13.
And 13 has always been Taylor’s lucky number. It appears in release dates, secret Easter eggs,and, of course, it is her birthday.
Enter Travis Kelce, her fiancé. His jersey number is 87.
Add them together, and you get 100.
In Jewish thought, 100 represents fullness. Not perfection, but a sense of spiritual completeness. Together, they create a whole equation: two lives balancing each other. Two very different people who found they complement each other.
But these themes, love, waiting and emotional courage, appear in our tradition from the very beginning.
When Isaac marries Rebekah, we read: “He took Rebekah, she became his wife, and he loved her.” One of the Torah’s first mentions of romantic love, and it comes after the commitment, not before. Almost like Isaac is quietly saying, “go ahead and pick out a white dress” (“Love Story”).
When Jacob falls for Rachel, the Torah tells us: “He served seven years for her, but they felt like only a few days, because of his love for her.” A love that bends time. Almost as if Jacob were saying, “I know you were meant to be timeless” (“Timeless”).
And beyond romance, we are commanded: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” A moral compass. A choice to see others not as threats but as reflections of our shared humanity. Or in Taylor’s language: “And control your urges to scream about all the people you hate” (“You Need to Calm Down”).
And then there is tzedakah, one of the most important Jewish values. A couple of months ago, Taylor heard about a two-year-old girl named Lilah battling a rare brain cancer, so she quietly donated $100,000 to her family. Her fans followed with gifts of $13 each. A harmony of compassion. Ahavah lived.
Because in the end, we are all trying to tell our own love story, whether written in a Torah scroll or sung on a stage, a story that helps us hold on even when we remember it all too well.
Maybe that is what double chai really means: taking the life we are given and doubling down to turn it into something that sings, something a little enchanted.
Eric B. Kingsley is a founding partner at Kingsley Szamet Employment Lawyers and is board president of Valley Beth Shalom in Los Angeles.
