Your name in the Torah: in Hebrew letters, as a number, with the verse it lands on and the sources. Computed, not divined. Free.
Your name
You did not choose your name. It was given — almost always after someone who came before you.
Abel (הבל) stands in the Torah as a word of its own — 7 times. First in Genesis 4:2.
The verse of your name
There is a sentence with which, by custom, a person answers when asked who they are.
Yours is this one.
הנני עמד לפניך שם על הצור בחרב והכית בצור ויצאו ממנו מים ושתה העם ויעש כן משה לעיני זקני ישראל
Exodus 17:6
The verse is chosen by the custom: it begins with the first letter of your name, ה, and ends with the last, ל.
The custom is written down in the Kitzur Shelah and in Sefer Ben Zion: “say it regularly and never forget it as long as you live.” The Rokeach gives the reason in Chochmat ha-Nefesh: a person is asked their name, and whoever does not remember cannot answer. The verse holds the name for them. Siddur ha-Rashban puts it more plainly: children were made to learn their verse by heart — so that if they were taken and forgot everything else, they would still know who they were.
The week you were born
Add your date of birth and we will show which portion the world was reading the week you appeared, and whether it holds a word of your number.
How rare this number is
A word with the number 37 appears in 20 of the 54 weekly portions.
What is left
We counted your name in one system. There are nine, and they give nine different numbers. When several systems lead to the same portion, the tradition reads that theme as strong. So far you have one.
Below — how this was counted, letter by letter.
Abel — A name of biblical origin — its biblical spelling is used. If your name is spelled differently, correct the Hebrew spelling and the report is recomputed.
הבל
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is הבל. Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 37 — the same as the Torah word גדל, “to be”. That number points to Torah page 37 of 354 — in the portion Chayei Sarah. What that portion is about: Sarah's death and the purchase of the cave of Machpelah; the servant seeks a wife for Isaac; Rebecca at the well; Abraham's death. The verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Êxodo 17:6. Each of these steps is laid out below with its sources. There are no predictions or judgments here — only the text of the Torah and arithmetic you can check.
Adding up the letters of the name הבל gives 37.
37
The number 37 is the Torah word גדל — «to be» (Genesis 12:2).
The number 37, as the remainder modulo 354, points to Torah page 37 in the book of Bereshit (Genesis). These are its opening words:
תבן ומספוא לגמלים ומים לרחץ רגליו ורגלי האנשים …
The verse this place falls on is Bereshit (Genesis) 24:32:
וַיָּבֹא הָאִישׁ הַבַּיְתָה וַיְפַתַּח הַגְּמַלִּים וַיִּתֵּן תֶּבֶן וּמִסְפּוֹא לַגְּמַלִּים וּמַיִם לִרְחֹץ רַגְלָיו וְרַגְלֵי הָאֲנָשִׁים אֲשֶׁר אִתּוֹ
And the man came into the house, and he ungirded the camels; and he gave straw and provender for the camels, and water to wash his feet and the feet of the men that were with him.
This is from the portion Chayei Sarah. What it is about: Sarah's death and the purchase of the cave of Machpelah; the servant seeks a wife for Isaac; Rebecca at the well; Abraham's death.
The same number, 37, is given by these biblical names:
אחזיהו · יהואחז · הבל · גדל
Nine ways of counting
The tradition counts the same name in several ways. The main one is above: each letter is its number. The other eight are old and checkable too; each gives its own number, and many of them have a Torah word with the same number.
Final letters as 500–900 (mispar gadol) — 37. A Torah word with the same number is גדל — “to be” (Genesis 12:2).
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 10. A Torah word with the same number is בדד — “separate” (Numbers 23:9).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 19. A Torah word with the same number is גוי — “a foreign nation” (Genesis 10:5).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 123.
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 929. A Torah word with the same number is יגרשהדותא — “Jegar-Sahadutha, a cairn East of the Jordan” (Genesis 31:47).
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 49. A Torah word with the same number is מואב — “Moab, an incestuous son of Lot” (Genesis 19:37).
The word that comes out is צשכ. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 410. A Torah word with the same number is שמע — “to hear intelligently” (Genesis 3:8).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 492.
The number 37 appears in the classical books 34 times across 18 works. The earliest mention is עולם אחד (~1480?).
The name הבל appears in the Torah as a word 7 times. The first time is Génesis 4:2. Another 1 time it stands with prefixes — “and”, “in”, “the”.
The verse of your name
There is a custom: at the end of the prayer one says a Torah verse that begins with the first letter of one's name and ends with its last. For הבל these are ה and ל. The Pentateuch has exactly one such verse — Êxodo 17:6:
הנני עמד לפניך שם על הצור בחרב והכית בצור ויצאו ממנו מים ושתה העם ויעש כן משה לעיני זקני ישראל
This is from the portion Beshalach. What it is about: The parting of the sea and the song of Moses and Miriam; manna and quail; water from the rock; the war with Amalek.
Each Hebrew letter has a number; a word's number is their sum (alef 1 … tav 400). The page is the remainder modulo 354: the Torah divided into 354 pages of 861 letters, as the lunar year has 354 days. Everything can be checked by hand.
Биньямин Пичхадзе, «Хумаш 354» (חומש 354), Бней-Брак, 2002 / התשס״ג · A calculation, not a prediction.