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.
The number of your name is 411. The Torah word שלמיאל — “Shelumiel, an Israelite” — has the same.
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.
אם אחרת יקח לו שארה כסותה וענתה לא יגרע
Exodus 21:10
The verse is chosen by the custom: it begins with the first letter of your name, א, and ends with the last, ע.
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 411 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.
Elisha — 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.
אלישע
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is אלישע. Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 411 — the same as the Torah word שלמיאל, “Shelumiel, an Israelite”. That number points to Torah page 57 of 354 — in the portion Vayishlach. What that portion 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. The verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Exodus 21:10. 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 אלישע gives 411.
411
The number 411 is the Torah word שלמיאל — «Shelumiel, an Israelite» (Numbers 1:6).
The number 411, as the remainder modulo 354, points to Torah page 57 in the book of Bereshit (Genesis). These are its opening words:
את הילדים על לאה ועל רחל ועל שתי …
The verse this place falls on is Bereshit (Genesis) 33:1:
וַיִּשָּׂא יַעֲקֹב עֵינָיו וַיַּרְא וְהִנֵּה עֵשָׂו בָּא וְעִמּוֹ אַרְבַּע מֵאוֹת אִישׁ וַיַּחַץ אֶת־הַיְלָדִים עַל־לֵאָה וְעַל־רָחֵל וְעַל שְׁתֵּי הַשְּׁפָחוֹת
And Jacob lifted up his eyes and looked, and, behold, Esau came, and with him four hundred men. And he divided the children unto Leah, and unto Rachel, and unto the two handmaids.
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.
The same number, 411, is given by these biblical names:
אלישע · עמשא · אתי · שלמיאל
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) — 411. A Torah word with the same number is שלמיאל — “Shelumiel, an Israelite” (Numbers 1:6).
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 15. A Torah word with the same number is זוב — “to flow freely” (Exodus 3:8).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 60. A Torah word with the same number is ילך — “to walk” (Genesis 3:14).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 1581.
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 95901.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 825.
The word that comes out is תכמבז. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 469.
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 695. A Torah word with the same number is תרצה — “Tirtsah, a place in Palestine” (Numbers 26:33).
The number 411 appears in the classical books 11 times across 8 works. The earliest mention is ספר קרניים (~1400).
The name אלישע does not stand as a word in the Pentateuch — as with most names, including many Tanakh names from the later books.
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 אלישע these are א and ע. The Pentateuch has 6 such verses. The first of them is Exodus 21:10:
אם אחרת יקח לו שארה כסותה וענתה לא יגרע
This is from the portion Mishpatim. What it is about: Laws of the servant, damages, theft and pledges; “an eye for an eye” as compensation; the sabbatical year; “we will do and we will hear”.
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.