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.
Baruch (ברוך) stands in the Torah as a word of its own — 17 times. First in Genesis 9:26.
Baruch (ברוך) — “Blessed.” The scribe of Jeremiah who wrote down his words (Jeremiah 36).
And the same number belongs to the Torah word בכור — “firstborn”.
228 and 228.
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.
בעוד שלשת ימים ישא פרעה את ראשך מעליך ותלה אותך על עץ ואכל העוף את בשרך מעליך
Genesis 40:19
The verse is chosen by the custom: it begins with the first letter of your name, ב, and ends with the last, כ.
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 228 appears in 29 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.
Baruch — 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.
ברוך
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is ברוך. “Blessed.” The scribe of Jeremiah who wrote down his words (Jeremiah 36). Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 228 — the same as the Torah word בכור, “firstborn”. That number points to Torah page 228 of 354 — in the portion Naso. What that portion is about: The sotah — the test of the wife; the nazirite; the priestly blessing; the gifts of the tribal chiefs for the dedication of the altar. The verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Génesis 40:19. 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 ברוך gives 228.
228
The number 228 is the Torah word בכור — «firstborn» (Genesis 10:15).
The number 228, as the remainder modulo 354, points to Torah page 228 in the book of Bamidbar (Numbers). These are its opening words:
ישראל איש או אשה כי יעשו מכל חטאת …
The verse this place falls on is Bamidbar (Numbers) 5:6:
דַּבֵּר אֶל־בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל אִישׁ אוֹ־אִשָּׁה כִּי יַעֲשׂוּ מִכָּל־חַטֹּאת הָאָדָם לִמְעֹל מַעַל בַּה׳ וְאָשְׁמָה הַנֶּפֶשׁ הַהִוא
Speak unto the children of Israel: When a man or woman shall commit any sin that men commit, to commit a trespass against HaShem, and that soul be guilty;
This is from the portion Naso. What it is about: The sotah — the test of the wife; the nazirite; the priestly blessing; the gifts of the tribal chiefs for the dedication of the altar.
The same number, 228, is given by these biblical names:
ברוך · אוריהו · בכרו · כרוב
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) — 708.
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 12. A Torah word with the same number is הוא — “she or it)” (Genesis 2:11).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 39. A Torah word with the same number is גאלה — “redemption” (Leviticus 25:24).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 894.
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 40440.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 640. A Torah word with the same number is שמש — “the sun” (Genesis 15:12).
The word that comes out is שגפל. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 413. A Torah word with the same number is גבחת — “baldness in the forehead” (Leviticus 13:42).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 1034.
The number 228 appears in the classical books 12 times across 9 works. The earliest mention is ספר קרניים (~1400).
The name ברוך appears in the Torah as a word 17 times. The first time is Génesis 9:26. Another 3 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 ברוך these are ב and כ. The Pentateuch has 9 such verses. The first of them is Génesis 40:19:
בעוד שלשת ימים ישא פרעה את ראשך מעליך ותלה אותך על עץ ואכל העוף את בשרך מעליך
This is from the portion Vayeshev. What it is about: Joseph's dreams and his sale by his brothers; Judah and Tamar; Joseph in Potiphar's house and in prison; the dreams of the butler and the baker.
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.