I know many mzungus like to think that the 'Old Testament' and the Pentateuch is JUST the 'history' of the liberation of the 'Jewish people' from Egypt. They tend to also believe that 'kabbalah' was something 'added later' in history (this even though there are countless examples that the original author of the Torah was interested in numerology.
Yet here is what struck me today while reading Rashi's commentary on chapters 14 and 15 of the Book of Exodus.
It wasn't a big surprise to see all the chapters assigned letters starting with alef (Chapter One). Chapter Two was bet, Chapter Three Gimmel and so on until you get past yod (Chapter Ten) where the next ten chapters read yod alef (Chapter Eleven), yod bet (Chapter Twelve), yod gimmel (Chapter Thirteen), yod dalet (Chapter Fourteen) but TET VAV rather than yod he was used for Chapter Fifteen.
It is easy to figure out why yod he was avoided. They manifest the name of God (yah). Yet the question that I started asking myself was whether this was really just a relatively recent 'superstition' or should we begin to question whether it was totally accidental that the Song of the Sea appears in the chapter which would normally spell out the divine name?
I don't think so, and neither does Marqe. We'll see that in the next chapter of his Mimar, the most important book in the Samaritan tradition, which I will post tonight ...
Stephan Huller has had a life long interest in religion and spirituality 
dating back to conversations with his grandfather, Gaston Frank. "He said we represent one of the last descendants of the Frankist Jewish faith in the world," he muses. "I grew up thinking that our family was something like the Last of the Mohicans."