Jewish Math

Shavua Tov.
I love living in Israel because everything here is JEWISH. 

This year, I am teaching my son in grade 8 his maths. For elementary school, there are "frummie" series of math books, which in itself is cool.  But even in the regular, "not religious" math books, every child learns gematria, which, again, is also "neat".

But what I found so super cool this week, is that in this regular, mainstream, not religious math book , bearing the very exciting name of מתמטיקה לכיתה ח by גבי יקואל ורחל בלומנקרנץ, in the chapter on deductive geometric proofs, before defining the math concept called תיכון (the line which goes from one angle of a triangle to the exact middle of the opposing line, bisector?), it says, and I quote:

המילה "תיכון" מופיע במקרא לראשונה בספר שמות, פרק כ"ו פסוק כ"ח בתיאור של בנית המשכן "והבריח התיכון בתוך הקרשים".  

פירוש המילה תיכון הוא "עובר באמצע".

The word "tichon" appears for the first time in the Torah in Sefer Shemot, 26:28, in the description of the construction of the Mishkan, "v'ha'bariah hatichon b'toch ha'kerashim".

In Israel, we don't just teach math when we teach math.  We don't even just teach a bit of language to help kids understand a new math term.  No.  In Israel, if a word or expression has a Torah source, then, no matter who we are and no matter who the audience is, that Torah reference is important.

Did I mention that I love living in Israel?   Maybe it's cuz I have always loved math?