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
Petur
Tap the letters of your name and add up its number yourself
0
The number of your name
Petur (פטור) — The name comes from Greek “petros”, which means “stone” or “rock”. And the same number belongs to the Torah word יריעה — “curtain”.
Your word in the Torah
The word יריעה — “curtain” — has the same number as your name. Here is the verse where it first appears:
ארך היריעה האחת שמנה ועשרים באמה ורחב ארבע באמה היריעה האחת מדה אחת לכל היריעת
Exodus 26:2
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.
פן יאמרו הארץ אשר הוצאתנו משם מבלי יכלת ה׳ להביאם אל הארץ אשר דבר להם ומשנאתו אותם הוציאם להמתם במדבר
Deuteronomy 9:28
The verse is chosen by the custom: it begins with the first letter of your name, פ, and ends with the last, ר.
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 295: 11 of 54
A word with the number 295 appears in 11 of the 54 weekly portions. That is a rare number: most numbers appear more often.
Fact. The letters of the name פטור add up to 295. Plain addition — you can check it yourself.
Meaning. There is a Torah word with the same number — יריעה (“curtain”). A matching sum does not mean the word is 'about you'; it is a reason to look at what in it matters to you.
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. 6 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 (295).
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.
Your name in Hebrew letters is פטור. The name comes from Greek “petros”, which means “stone” or “rock”. It became common in Europe because of the apostle Peter. This form of the name is used in Iceland. In Hebrew it is written by sound. Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 295 — the same as the Torah word יריעה, “curtain”. That number points to Torah page 295 of 354 — in the portion Devarim. What that portion is about: Moses begins his address in the plains of Moab: judges, spies, forty years of wandering, the victories over Sihon and Og. The verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Deuteronomy 9:28. Each of these steps is laid out below with its sources. Every figure can be checked by hand.
You wrote “Petur” — this exact spelling is what was calculated: פטור. Spelled by the Academy of the Hebrew Language rules for foreign names. If your name is spelled differently, correct the Hebrew spelling and the report is recomputed.
If you meant the name “Peter” (פטר), write it and I will calculate that one.
Adding up the letters of the name פטור gives 295.
295
The number 295 is the Torah word יריעה — «curtain» (Exodus 26:1).
And in Seir dwelt the Horites aforetime, but the children of Esau succeeded them; and they destroyed them from before them, and dwelt in their stead; as Israel did unto the land of his possession, which HaShem gave unto them.--
This is from the portion Devarim. What it is about: Moses begins his address in the plains of Moab: judges, spies, forty years of wandering, the victories over Sihon and Og.
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) — 295. A Torah word with the same number is יריעה — “curtain” (Exodus 26:1).
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 25. A Torah word with the same number is כה — “thus, so” (Genesis 15:5).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 52. A Torah word with the same number is בן — “son” (Genesis 3:16).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 1266.
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 46517.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 559. A Torah word with the same number is גרשון — “Gershon, son of Levi” (Genesis 46:11).
The letters that come out are ונפג — not a word that stands in the Pentateuch. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 139. A Torah word with the same number is לקט — “to gather” (Genesis 31:46).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 1022.
The number 295 appears in the classical books 7 times across 7 works. The earliest mention is בעל הטורים על התורה (~1300).
The name פטור 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 פטור these are פ and ר. The Pentateuch has exactly one such verse — Deuteronomy 9:28:
פן יאמרו הארץ אשר הוצאתנו משם מבלי יכלת ה׳ להביאם אל הארץ אשר דבר להם ומשנאתו אותם הוציאם להמתם במדבר
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.
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 — 295. The channel posts one number a day, one verse and the Torah page it lands on. Nothing after it, no mailing list.
The name פטור has no such day. The numbers of the dates in a year cover 326 values out of 940, and 295 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.