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 515. The Torah word ירשה — “something occupied” — 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.
המוליכך במדבר הגדל והנורא נחש שרף ועקרב וצמאון אשר אין מים המוציא לך מים מצור החלמיש
Deuteronomy 8:15
The verse is chosen by the custom: it begins with the first letter of your name, ה, and ends with the last, ש.
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 515 appears in 19 of the 54 weekly portions.
You are not alone in this number
The same number belongs to these names:
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.
Hirsch — 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.
הירש
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is הירש. Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 515 — the same as the Torah word ירשה, “something occupied”. That number points to Torah page 161 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 Deuteronomy 8:15. 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 הירש gives 515.
515
The number 515 is the Torah word ירשה — «something occupied» (Deuteronomy 2:5).
The number 515, as the remainder modulo 354, points to Torah page 161 in the book of Shmot (Exodus). These are its opening words:
המזבח ואת אדני החצר סביב ואת אדני שער …
The verse this place falls on is Shmot (Exodus) 38:30:
וַיַּעַשׂ בָּהּ אֶת־אַדְנֵי פֶּתַח אֹהֶל מוֹעֵד וְאֵת מִזְבַּח הַנְּחֹשֶׁת וְאֶת־מִכְבַּר הַנְּחֹשֶׁת אֲשֶׁר־לוֹ וְאֵת כָּל־כְּלֵי הַמִּזְבֵּחַ
And therewith he made the sockets to the door of the tent of meeting, and the brazen altar, and the brazen grating for it, and all the vessels of the altar,
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, 515, is given by these biblical names:
שריה · נתניה · עתליה · אשחור
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) — 515. A Torah word with the same number is ירשה — “something occupied” (Deuteronomy 2:5).
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 11. A Torah word with the same number is חג — “a festival, or a victim therefor” (Exodus 10:9).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 56. A Torah word with the same number is יום — “a day” (Genesis 1:5).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 1960.
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 130125.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 750. A Torah word with the same number is נתש — “to tear away” (Deuteronomy 29:27).
The word that comes out is צמגב. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 135. A Torah word with the same number is מצה — “sweetness” (Genesis 19:3).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 896.
The number 515 appears in the classical books 31 times across 15 works. The earliest mention is בעל הטורים על התורה (~1300).
The name הירש 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 הירש these are ה and ש. The Pentateuch has 2 such verses. The first of them is Deuteronomy 8:15:
המוליכך במדבר הגדל והנורא נחש שרף ועקרב וצמאון אשר אין מים המוציא לך מים מצור החלמיש
This is from the portion Eikev. What it is about: “Because you will heed”: the land of seven fruits; the blessing after meals; manna as a test; the second paragraph of the Shema.
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.