We know that R' Michoel Ber Weissmandl is known for the Torah codes. How did this come about?
R' Michoel Ber Weissmandl wrote when his eldest son was born in Tishrei 1942:
On the night of Yom Kippur when my son was born, I remained in shul reciting Tehillim. After finishing I found myself alone in shul. At that moment, I felt a strong urge to take out a Sefer Torah and learn from it, and so I did. After some time, I sensed that the shul had become filled with a holy light. I saw the letters in the Torah as they are set up in a different way, as one letter was illuminating, and then, fifty letters later, another letter would shine, followed again by another letter after an additional fifty letters.
I understood that these illuminated letters could be combined to form words, their connection being that they were spaced at equal intervals. In this way, I realized that the Torah could be read through hidden patterns, and that by counting letters one could uncover complete words. This revealed to me the immense wisdom concealed within the Torah.
In the days between the birth of his first son and his bris milah, R' Michoel Ber discovered this path in Torah. This approach later became widely known as “Torah codes” or “Bible codes,” a method of uncovering hidden words by combining letters that are equally spaced throughout the text.
The first time R' Michoel Ber publicly revealed these remazim was at the bris of his son, which took place on the first day of Chol Hamoed Sukkos. During the seudah, after beginning with a Talmudic discourse, he revealed for the first time this newly acquired wellspring of Torah knowledge.
His speech at the bris lasted several hours and was filled with profound hidden messages in the Torah, deciphered through these codes. The audience, which included many distinguished rabbanim and dayanim, listened in rapt attention. Rabbi Shlomo Stern, who was present, later recalled, “I attended that bris, and it was unforgettable and indescribable.”
R' Michoel Ber never claimed this crown for himself. He would often say that he had not invented this method, but had seen it in the writings of Rabbeinu Bachya. Once, before sharing a remez he had uncovered, R' Michoel Ber said that Rabbeinu Bachya writes in Parshas Bereishis that the first molad of the moon in the history of the world occurred on a Monday, five hours and 204 chalokim (fractions of an hour when the hour is divided in 1,080). This, he explained, is hinted at by beginning with the first letter of the Torah, the beis of Bereishis, and counting forty-two letters to arrive at a hei. Counting another forty-two letters brings one to a reish, and another forty-two letters to a dalet. The ב, with a numerical value of two, represents the second day of the week—Monday. The ה signifies the fifth hour, and the ר and ד together equal 204, corresponding to the 204 chalokim. R' Michoel Ber added, “I believe with certainty that the entire Oral Torah is hidden within the Written Torah through this method.” He then shared a remez he had discovered that very day.
When the Steipler Gaon was shown some of R' Michoel Ber’s remazim, he was overcome with emotion. He expressed regret that he had never met him and remarked, “The author of these words certainly possesses a spark of Ruach Hakodesh.”
Hundreds of baalei teshuvah attribute their return to Yiddishkeit to their exposure to R' Michoel Ber’s esoteric Torah codes. For many, the mystical language of these cryptic codes was the decisive factor that led them to recognize the divine origin of the Torah.
Rabbi Yosef Brody, who had studied in the Nitra Yeshiva before the Holocaust, once reflected on his life during the holocaust: “The strength that sustained me through those terrible times, what preserved my emunah in Hashem, was the remazim I heard from R' Michoel Ber during my yeshiva years. They were the source of strength that carried me through the bitter war years and enabled me to emerge with my faith fully intact.”
