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.
Raphael (רפאל) — “God has healed.” In the Tanakh the name of a Levite (1 Chronicles 26:7); as an angel’s name it is known from Tobit and the Talmud.
And the same number belongs to the Torah word איש — “a man as an individual or a male person”.
311 and 311.
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.
רבוע היה כפול עשו את החשן זרת ארכו וזרת רחבו כפול
Exodus 39:9
The verse is chosen by the custom: it begins with the first letter of your name, ר, and ends with the last, ל.
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 311 appears in 54 of the 54 weekly portions. That is a common number — it is in most 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.
Raphael — 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.
רפאל
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is רפאל. “God has healed.” In the Tanakh the name of a Levite (1 Chronicles 26:7); as an angel’s name it is known from Tobit and the Talmud. Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 311 — the same as the Torah word איש, “a man as an individual or a male person”. That number points to Torah page 311 of 354 — in the portion Eikev. What that portion 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. The verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Exodus 39:9. 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 רפאל gives 311.
311
The number 311 is the Torah word איש — «a man as an individual or a male person» (Genesis 2:23).
The number 311, as the remainder modulo 354, points to Torah page 311 in the book of Devarim (Deuteronomy). These are its opening words:
ממרים הייתם עם יהוה מיום דעתי אתכם ואתנפל …
The verse this place falls on is Devarim (Deuteronomy) 9:23:
וּבִשְׁלֹחַ ה׳ אֶתְכֶם מִקָּדֵשׁ בַּרְנֵעַ לֵאמֹר עֲלוּ וּרְשׁוּ אֶת־הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר נָתַתִּי לָכֶם וַתַּמְרוּ אֶת־פִּי ה׳ אֱלֹהֵיכֶם וְלֹא הֶאֱמַנְתֶּם לוֹ וְלֹא שְׁמַעְתֶּם בְּקֹלוֹ
And when HaShem sent you from Kadesh-barnea, saying: 'Go up and possess the land which I have given you'; then ye rebelled against the commandment of HaShem your G-d, and ye believed Him not, nor hearkened to His voice.
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.
The same number, 311, is given by these biblical names:
צרויה · איש · שגוב · רעמא
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) — 311. A Torah word with the same number is איש — “a man as an individual or a male person” (Genesis 2:23).
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 14. A Torah word with the same number is יד — “a hand” (Genesis 3:22).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 50. A Torah word with the same number is כל — “the whole” (Genesis 1:21).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 1306.
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 47301.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 1072.
The word that comes out is גותכ. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 429. A Torah word with the same number is משפט — “a verdict” (Genesis 18:19).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 776.
The number 311 appears in the classical books 16 times across 11 works. The earliest mention is ספר קרניים (~1400).
The name רפאל 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 רפאל these are ר and ל. The Pentateuch has 3 such verses. The first of them is Exodus 39:9:
רבוע היה כפול עשו את החשן זרת ארכו וזרת רחבו כפול
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.
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.