Although it may not seem like much on the surface, in Hebrew, the phrase “wine entered, secret went out,” has a special meaning. It’s a well-known example of the ancient practice of gematria, a system of assigning numerical value to a word or phrase, in the belief that words or phrases with identical numerical values bear some relation to each other. The fact that “wine entered” has the same numerical value as “secret went out,” it’s considered evidence that the statement is true. While Ira Riklis leaves such calculations to others, he knows that Gematria is an important part of Jewish beliefs.
One of the best-known examples of these equivalences is Chai, the Hebrew word for life, which is composed of two letters which add up to 18. That has made 18 something of a symbolic number among Jews. And that’s why, when making donations, Ira Riklis usually gives in some multiple of 18.