How your name is written in the letters of the Torah
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
Ella
Tap the letters of your name and add up its number yourself
0
The number of your name
Ella (אלה) stands in the Torah as a word of its own — 133 times. First in Genesis 2:4.
Your word in the Torah
The word אלה — “these” — has the same number as your name. Here is the verse where it first appears:
אלה תולדות השמים והארץ בהבראם ביום עשות ה׳ אלהים ארץ ושמים
Genesis 2:4
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.
אל מקום המזבח אשר עשה שם בראשנה ויקרא שם אברם בשם ה׳
Genesis 13:4
The verse is chosen by the custom: it begins with the first letter of your name, א, and ends with the last, ה.
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
Torah portions with a word of number 36: 42 of 54
A word with the number 36 appears in 42 of the 54 weekly portions. That is a common number — it is in most portions.
Fact. The letters of the name אלה add up to 36. Plain addition — you can check it yourself.
Meaning. There is a Torah word with the same number — אלה (“these”). A matching sum does not mean the word is 'about you'; it is a reason to look at what in it matters to you.
Story. לאה — this name has the same sum, 36. Leah's eyes were 'tender' from tears: she prayed for her life to turn out differently — and her prayer was accepted. (Bava Batra 123a)
A question for yourself. What in this do you recognise in yourself — and what would you like to strengthen?
Practice. This week: open the verse of your name, read it slowly three times and write down one thought that stays with you.
The tradition counts a name in nine ways, each giving its own number. 8 of the nine have a word of their own in the Torah. We showed one. The rest are in the full report.
A verse for what you need
Pick a theme — we show a Tanakh verse on it that contains a word with your name's number (36).
Our verse — for two
Type the name of someone close. We find the verse that begins with a letter of one name and ends with a letter of the other — your pair's verse.
My days of the year
The days when the number of the Hebrew date equals your name's number, and the Shabbat when the world reads the portion of your verse — straight into your phone's calendar.
Every morning in Telegram — your verse, how to read it in Latin letters, and one new word. Half a minute a day. After seven days the verse stays with you.
Spelling attested: this is how the name is recorded in the open Wikidata name base.
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is אלה. A Tanakh name: the name of an Edomite and four Israelites (first in Genesis 36:41; 16 mentions in the Tanakh). Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 36 — the same as the Torah word אלה, “these”. That number points to Torah page 36 of 354 — in the portion Chayei Sarah. What that portion 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. The verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Genesis 13:4. Each of these steps is laid out below with its sources. Every figure can be checked by hand.
You wrote “Ella” — this exact spelling is what was calculated: אלה. The customary Hebrew spelling of this name. If your name is spelled differently, correct the Hebrew spelling and the report is recomputed.
Adding up the letters of the name אלה gives 36.
36
The number 36 is the Torah word אלה — «these» (Genesis 2:4).
So let it come to pass, that the damsel to whom I shall say: Let down thy pitcher, I pray thee, that I may drink; and she shall say: Drink, and I will give thy camels drink also; let the same be she that Thou hast appointed for Thy servant, even for Isaac; and thereby shall I know that Thou hast shown kindness unto my master.'
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.
The same number, 36, is given by these Tanakh names:
Leah לאה
Other 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) — 36. A Torah word with the same number is אלה — “these” (Genesis 2:4).
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 9. A Torah word with the same number is בוא — “to come, enter” (Genesis 2:19).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 18. A Torah word with the same number is חי — “living” (Genesis 1:20).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 121. A Torah word with the same number is אצל — “beside” (Genesis 39:10).
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 926.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 68. A Torah word with the same number is חלל — “to begin” (Genesis 4:26).
The letters that come out are תכצ — not a word that stands in the Pentateuch. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 510. A Torah word with the same number is ירש — “to inherit, possess” (Genesis 15:3).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 191. A Torah word with the same number is המקום — “the place” (Genesis 13:3).
The number 36 appears in the classical books 19 times across 16 works. The earliest mention is ילקוט שמעוני (~1260).
The name אלה appears in the Torah as a word 133 times. The first time is Genesis 2:4. Another 142 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 אלה these are א and ה. The Pentateuch has 49 such verses. The first of them is Genesis 13:4:
אל מקום המזבח אשר עשה שם בראשנה ויקרא שם אברם בשם ה׳
This is from the portion Lech Lecha. What it is about: “Go forth”: Abraham leaves Haran; the promise of land and offspring; the covenant between the pieces; circumcision.
Every letter of the name explained, the words and namesakes with references, the Hebrew date, the letter and tribe of the month, day 861 of your life (±1), the psalm by age, the attestations from the classical books — a PDF sent to your email.
The number of the day, every morning
Every date has a number too. Once a year it will match the number of your name — 36. The channel posts one number a day, one verse and the Torah page it lands on. Nothing after it, no mailing list.
The name אלה has no such day. The numbers of the dates in a year cover 326 values out of 940, and 36 is not among them. Half of all names are like this — neither good nor bad, just a fact of counting.
How it is counted
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.