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 320. The Torah word נער — “a boy” — 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.
ישלח ה׳ בך את המארה את המהומה ואת המגערת בכל משלח ידך אשר תעשה עד השמדך ועד אבדך מהר מפני רע מעלליך אשר עזבתני
Deuteronomy 28:20
The verse is chosen by the custom: it begins with the first letter of your name, י, and ends with the last, י.
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 320 appears in 29 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.
Jesse — 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.
ישי
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is ישי. Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 320 — the same as the Torah word נער, “a boy”. That number points to Torah page 320 of 354 — in the portion Re'eh. What that portion is about: “See”: blessing and curse; one place of worship; the tithe; permitted food; the three pilgrimage festivals. The verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Deuteronomy 28:20. 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 ישי gives 320.
320
The number 320 is the Torah word נער — «a boy» (Genesis 14:24).
The number 320, as the remainder modulo 354, points to Torah page 320 in the book of Devarim (Deuteronomy). These are its opening words:
לפני יהוה אלהיך במקום אשר יבחר לשכן שמו …
The verse this place falls on is Devarim (Deuteronomy) 14:23:
וְאָכַלְתָּ לִפְנֵי ה׳ אֱלֹהֶיךָ בַּמָּקוֹם אֲשֶׁר־יִבְחַר לְשַׁכֵּן שְׁמוֹ שָׁם מַעְשַׂר דְּגָנְךָ תִּירֹשְׁךָ וְיִצְהָרֶךָ וּבְכֹרֹת בְּקָרְךָ וְצֹאנֶךָ לְמַעַן תִּלְמַד לְיִרְאָה אֶת־ה׳ אֱלֹהֶיךָ כָּל־הַיָּמִים
And thou shalt eat before HaShem thy G-d, in the place which He shall choose to cause His name to dwell there, the tithe of thy corn, of thy wine, and of thine oil, and the firstlings of thy herd and of thy flock; that thou mayest learn to fear HaShem thy G-d always.
This is from the portion Re'eh. What it is about: “See”: blessing and curse; one place of worship; the tithe; permitted food; the three pilgrimage festivals.
The same number, 320, is given by these biblical names:
רחבעם · ישי · עמרי · נבוזראדן
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) — 320. A Torah word with the same number is נער — “a boy” (Genesis 14:24).
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 5. A Torah word with the same number is אד — “a fog” (Genesis 2:6).
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) — 1205.
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 90200.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 640. A Torah word with the same number is שמש — “the sun” (Genesis 15:12).
The word that comes out is מבמ. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 82. A Torah word with the same number is לבן — “Laban, a Mesopotamian” (Genesis 24:29).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 400. A Torah word with the same number is שנים — “two” (Genesis 1:16).
The number 320 appears in the classical books 27 times across 14 works. The earliest mention is בעל הטורים על התורה (~1300).
The name ישי 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 ישי these are י and י. The Pentateuch has exactly one such verse — Deuteronomy 28:20:
ישלח ה׳ בך את המארה את המהומה ואת המגערת בכל משלח ידך אשר תעשה עד השמדך ועד אבדך מהר מפני רע מעלליך אשר עזבתני
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.