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.
Asher (אשר) stands in the Torah as a word of its own — 1,664 times. First in Genesis 1:7.
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.
אדני שמעני ארץ ארבע מאת שקל כסף ביני ובינך מה הוא ואת מתך קבר
Genesis 23:15
The verse is chosen by the custom: it begins with the first letter of your name, א, and ends with the last, ר.
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 501 appears in 45 of the 54 weekly portions. That is a common number — it is in most 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.
Asher — 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.
אשר
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is אשר. “Happy” (Genesis 30:13). Jacob’s eighth son; the tribe of Asher was known for its olive oil. Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 501 — the same as the Torah word אשר, “who, which, what, that”. That number points to Torah page 147 of 354 — in the portion Ki Tisa. What that portion is about: The half-shekel for the census; the golden calf and the broken tablets; the thirteen attributes of mercy; the second tablets. The verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Genesis 23:15. 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 אשר gives 501.
501
The number 501 is the Torah word אשר — «who, which, what, that» (Genesis 1:7).
The number 501, as the remainder modulo 354, points to Torah page 147 in the book of Shmot (Exodus). These are its opening words:
על אהרן ויאמרו אליו קום עשה לנו אלהים …
The verse this place falls on is Shmot (Exodus) 32:1:
וַיַּרְא הָעָם כִּי־בֹשֵׁשׁ מֹשֶׁה לָרֶדֶת מִן־הָהָר וַיִּקָּהֵל הָעָם עַל־אַהֲרֹן וַיֹּאמְרוּ אֵלָיו קוּם עֲשֵׂה־לָנוּ אֱלֹהִים אֲשֶׁר יֵלְכוּ לְפָנֵינוּ כִּי־זֶה מֹשֶׁה הָאִישׁ אֲשֶׁר הֶעֱלָנוּ מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם לֹא יָדַעְנוּ מֶה־הָיָה לוֹ
And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him: 'Up, make us a god who shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we know not what is become of him.'
This is from the portion Ki Tisa. What it is about: The half-shekel for the census; the golden calf and the broken tablets; the thirteen attributes of mercy; the second tablets.
The same number, 501, is given by these biblical names:
אשר · אתנן · יתניאל · ראש
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) — 501. A Torah word with the same number is אשר — “who, which, what, that” (Genesis 1:7).
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 6. A Torah word with the same number is בד — “separation” (Genesis 2:18).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 42. A Torah word with the same number is חדל — “to be flabby, i.e.” (Genesis 11:8).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 1891.
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 130001.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 803.
The word that comes out is תבג. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 405. A Torah word with the same number is שקה — “to quaff, i.e.” (Genesis 2:6).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 981.
The number 501 appears in the classical books 13 times across 10 works. The earliest mention is בעל הטורים על התורה (~1300).
The name אשר appears in the Torah as a word 1,664 times. The first time is Genesis 1:7. Another 264 times 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 אשר these are א and ר. The Pentateuch has 15 such verses. The first of them is Genesis 23:15:
אדני שמעני ארץ ארבע מאת שקל כסף ביני ובינך מה הוא ואת מתך קבר
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.
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.