Mysticism and MD5

[marsgov]

During New Year services yesterday, I noted in my usual despair the mysticism inherent in certain parts of the services.

In particular, gematria, a Jewish version of numerology. I'm not a fan, to say the least; the last time I spoke on the subject in synagogue, I pointed out that the Hebrew for "State of Israel" had the same numerical value as "

Comments

[docstrange]

מָגֵן דָּוִד ה

Clearly it is the correct earthly hash.

SHA-1, however, is patently the heavenly hash, but its full name shall not be written.

And Crystal Farms Simply Potatoes Shredded Hash Browns is manifestly the correct breakfast hash.

[whl]

Why wouldn't a CRC checksum suffice? Less computationally intense. Or on the other end, SHA-1 is looking shaky these days, so one of the two SHA-2 algorithms might be better suited.

Of course, SHA is also a letter in the Cyrillic alphabet, which might be a sign.