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.
Chaim (חיים) stands in the Torah as a word of its own — 20 times. First in Genesis 2:7.
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.
חמש עשרה אמה מלמעלה גברו המים ויכסו ההרים
Genesis 7:20
The verse is chosen by the custom: it begins with the first letter of your name, ח, and ends with the last, מ.
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 68 appears in 38 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.
Chaim — 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.
חיים
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is חיים. Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 68 — the same as the Torah word חלל, “to bore, i.e.”. That number points to Torah page 68 of 354 — in the portion Vayeshev. What that portion 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. The verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Genesis 7:20. 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 חיים gives 68.
68
The number 68 is the Torah word חלל — «to bore, i.e.» (Genesis 4:26).
The number 68, as the remainder modulo 354, points to Torah page 68 in the book of Bereshit (Genesis). These are its opening words:
וישרת אתו ויפקדהו על ביתו וכל יש לו …
The verse this place falls on is Bereshit (Genesis) 39:4:
וַיִּמְצָא יוֹסֵף חֵן בְּעֵינָיו וַיְשָׁרֶת אֹתוֹ וַיַּפְקִדֵהוּ עַל־בֵּיתוֹ וְכָל־יֶשׁ־לוֹ נָתַן בְּיָדוֹ
And Joseph found favour in his sight, and he ministered unto him. And he appointed him overseer over his house, and all that he had he put into his hand.
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.
The same number, 68, is given by these biblical names:
בנוי · אזני · בוני · זינא
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) — 628.
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 14. A Torah word with the same number is יד — “a hand” (Genesis 3:22).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 41. A Torah word with the same number is אם — “very widely as demonstrative, lo!” (Genesis 4:7).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 291. A Torah word with the same number is ארץ — “the earth” (Genesis 1:1).
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 1864.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 122. A Torah word with the same number is ענב — “a grape” (Genesis 40:10).
The word that comes out is סממי. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 150. A Torah word with the same number is יסף — “to add or augment” (Genesis 4:2).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 538.
The number 68 appears in the classical books 55 times across 26 works. The earliest mention is בעל הטורים על התורה (~1300).
The name חיים appears in the Torah as a word 20 times. The first time is Genesis 2:7. Another 10 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 חיים these are ח and מ. The Pentateuch has exactly one such verse — Genesis 7:20:
חמש עשרה אמה מלמעלה גברו המים ויכסו ההרים
This is from the portion Noach. What it is about: The flood and the ark; the rainbow as a sign of the covenant; the tower of Babel; ten generations from Noah to Abraham.
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.