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.
Benjamin (בנימין) stands in the Torah as a word of its own — 7 times. First in Genesis 35:18.
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.
בני לאה בכור יעקב ראובן ושמעון ולוי ויהודה ויששכר וזבולן
Genesis 35:23
The verse is chosen by the custom: it begins with the first letter of your name, ב, and ends with the last, נ.
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 162 appears in 14 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.
Benjamin — 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.
בנימין
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is בנימין. “Son of the right hand” or “son of the south.” Jacob and Rachel’s youngest, the only son born in the Land of Israel (Genesis 35:18). Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 162 — the same as the Torah word בנימין, “Binjamin, youngest son of Jacob”. That number points to Torah page 162 of 354 — in the portion Pekudei. What that portion is about: The accounting of the materials; the priestly garments are finished; the Tabernacle is raised on the first of Nisan; the cloud covers it. The verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Genesis 35:23. 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 בנימין gives 162.
162
The number 162 is the Torah word בנימין — «Binjamin, youngest son of Jacob» (Genesis 35:18).
The number 162, as the remainder modulo 354, points to Torah page 162 in the book of Shmot (Exodus). These are its opening words:
הזהב על שתי הטבעת על קצות החשן ואת …
The verse this place falls on is Shmot (Exodus) 39:17:
וַיִּתְּנוּ שְׁתֵּי הָעֲבֹתֹת הַזָּהָב עַל־שְׁתֵּי הַטַּבָּעֹת עַל־קְצוֹת הַחֹשֶׁן
And they put the two wreathen chains of gold on the two rings at the ends of the breastplate.
This is from the portion Pekudei. What it is about: The accounting of the materials; the priestly garments are finished; the Tabernacle is raised on the first of Nisan; the cloud covers it.
The same number, 162, is given by these biblical names:
בנימין · אליפלהו
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) — 812.
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 18. A Torah word with the same number is חי — “alive” (Genesis 1:20).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 63. A Torah word with the same number is חנה — “to incline” (Genesis 26:17).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 648. A Torah word with the same number is מחרת — “the morrow or” (Genesis 19:34).
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 6804.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 492.
The word that comes out is שטמימט. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 408. A Torah word with the same number is זאת — “this” (Genesis 2:23).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 744. A Torah word with the same number is שותלח — “Shuthelach, the name of two Israelites” (Numbers 26:35).
The number 162 appears in the classical books 3 times across 3 works. The earliest mention is פרי עץ חיים שער חג המצות (~1573).
The name בנימין appears in the Torah as a word 7 times. The first time is Genesis 35:18.
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 בנימין these are ב and נ. The Pentateuch has 9 such verses. The first of them is Genesis 35:23:
בני לאה בכור יעקב ראובן ושמעון ולוי ויהודה ויששכר וזבולן
This is from the portion Vayishlach. What it is about: Wrestling with the angel and the name Israel; the meeting with Esau; Dinah in Shechem; the birth of Benjamin and Rachel'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.