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.
Jethro (יתרו) stands in the Torah as a word of its own — 9 times. First in Exodus 3:1.
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.
יפת אלהים ליפת וישכן באהלי שם ויהי כנען עבד למו
Genesis 9:27
The verse is chosen by the custom: it begins with the first letter of your name, י, and ends with the last, ו.
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 616 appears in 17 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.
Jethro — 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.
יתרו
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is יתרו. “His abundance.” The priest of Midian, Moses’ father-in-law; he advised appointing judges (Exodus 18). Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 616 — the same as the Torah word יתרו, “Jethro, Moses' father-in-law”. That number points to Torah page 262 of 354 — in the portion Chukat. What that portion is about: The red heifer; Miriam's death; water from the rock and the striking with the staff; Aaron's death; the bronze serpent. The verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Genesis 9:27. 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 יתרו gives 616.
616
The number 616 is the Torah word יתרו — «Jethro, Moses' father-in-law» (Exodus 3:1).
The number 616, as the remainder modulo 354, points to Torah page 262 in the book of Bamidbar (Numbers). These are its opening words:
מלך האמרי הוא והוא נלחם במלך מואב הראשון …
The verse this place falls on is Bamidbar (Numbers) 21:26:
כִּי חֶשְׁבּוֹן עִיר סִיחֹן מֶלֶךְ הָאֱמֹרִי הִוא וְהוּא נִלְחַם בְּמֶלֶךְ מוֹאָב הָרִאשׁוֹן וַיִּקַּח אֶת־כָּל־אַרְצוֹ מִיָּדוֹ עַד־אַרְנֹן
For Heshbon was the city of Sihon the king of the Amorites, who had fought against the former king of Moab, and taken all his land out of his hand, even unto the Arnon.
This is from the portion Chukat. What it is about: The red heifer; Miriam's death; water from the rock and the striking with the staff; Aaron's death; the bronze serpent.
The same number, 616, is given by these biblical names:
יתרו · רחבות · ארידתא
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) — 616. A Torah word with the same number is יתרו — “Jethro, Moses' father-in-law” (Exodus 3:1).
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 13. A Torah word with the same number is אחד — “united, i.e. one” (Genesis 1:5).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 58. A Torah word with the same number is נח — “Noach, the patriarch of the flood” (Genesis 5:29).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 2366.
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 200136.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 1646.
The word that comes out is מאגפ. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 124. A Torah word with the same number is עדן — “Eden, the region of Adam's home” (Genesis 2:8).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 948. A Torah word with the same number is מרחשת — “a stewpan” (Leviticus 2:7).
The number 616 appears in the classical books 11 times across 7 works. The earliest mention is בעל הטורים על התורה (~1300).
The name יתרו appears in the Torah as a word 9 times. The first time is Exodus 3:1. 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 יתרו these are י and ו. The Pentateuch has 7 such verses. The first of them is Genesis 9:27:
יפת אלהים ליפת וישכן באהלי שם ויהי כנען עבד למו
This is from the portion Noach. What it is about: The flood and the ark; the rainbow as a sign of the covenant; the tower of Babel; ten generations from Noah to Abraham.
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.