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.
Gershon (גרשון) stands in the Torah as a word of its own — 11 times. First in Genesis 46:11.
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.
גוי עז פנים אשר לא ישא פנים לזקן ונער לא יחן
Deuteronomy 28:50
The verse is chosen by the custom: it begins with the first letter of your name, ג, 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 559 appears in 8 of the 54 weekly portions. That is a rare number: most numbers appear more often.
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.
Gershon — 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.
גרשון
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is גרשון. Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 559 — the same as the Torah word גרשון, “Gereshon or Gereshom, an Israelite”. That number points to Torah page 205 of 354 — in the portion Emor. What that portion is about: Laws of the priests; animals without blemish; the calendar of festivals — from the Sabbath to Sukkot; the lamp and the showbread. The verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Дварим 28:50. 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 גרשון gives 559.
559
The number 559 is the Torah word גרשון — «Gereshon or Gereshom, an Israelite» (Genesis 46:11).
The number 559, as the remainder modulo 354, points to Torah page 205 in the book of Vayikra (Leviticus). These are its opening words:
או ילפת לא תקריבו אלה ליהוה ואשה לא …
The verse this place falls on is Vayikra (Leviticus) 22:22:
עַוֶּרֶת אוֹ שָׁבוּר אוֹ־חָרוּץ אוֹ־יַבֶּלֶת אוֹ גָרָב אוֹ יַלֶּפֶת לֹא־תַקְרִיבוּ אֵלֶּה לַה׳ וְאִשֶּׁה לֹא־תִתְּנוּ מֵהֶם עַל־הַמִּזְבֵּחַ לַה׳
Blind, or broken, or maimed, or having a wen, or scabbed, or scurvy, ye shall not offer these unto HaShem, nor make an offering by fire of them upon the altar unto HaShem.
This is from the portion Emor. What it is about: Laws of the priests; animals without blemish; the calendar of festivals — from the Sabbath to Sukkot; the lamp and the showbread.
The same number, 559, is given by these biblical names:
גרשון
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) — 1209.
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 19. A Torah word with the same number is גוי — “a foreign nation” (Genesis 10:5).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 64. A Torah word with the same number is נטה — “to stretch or spread out” (Genesis 12:8).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 2112.
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 132545.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 1777.
The word that comes out is רגבפט. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 294. A Torah word with the same number is ארגמן — “purple” (Exodus 25:4).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 1071.
The number 559 appears in the classical books 3 times across 3 works. The earliest mention is ציצים ופרחים (יעב"ץ) (~1750).
The name גרשון appears in the Torah as a word 11 times. The first time is Берешит 46:11. Another 2 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 גרשון these are ג and נ. The Pentateuch has exactly one such verse — Дварим 28:50:
גוי עז פנים אשר לא ישא פנים לזקן ונער לא יחן
This is from the portion Ki Tavo. What it is about: “When you enter”: the first fruits and the declaration; the stones on Mount Ebal; blessings and admonitions.
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.