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.
Shifra (שפרה) stands in the Torah as a word of its own — 1 time. First in Exodus 1:15.
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.
שמה קברו את אברהם ואת שרה אשתו שמה קברו את יצחק ואת רבקה אשתו ושמה קברתי את לאה
Genesis 49:31
The verse is chosen by the custom: it begins with the first letter of your name, ש, and ends with the last, ה.
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 585 appears in 5 of the 54 weekly portions. That is a rare number: most numbers appear more often.
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.
Shifra — 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.
שפרה
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is שפרה. Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 585 — the same as the Torah word שרפה, “cremation”. That number points to Torah page 231 of 354 — in the portion Naso. What that portion is about: The sotah — the test of the wife; the nazirite; the priestly blessing; the gifts of the tribal chiefs for the dedication of the altar. The verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Genesis 49:31. 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 שפרה gives 585.
585
The number 585 is the Torah word שרפה — «cremation» (Genesis 11:3).
The number 585, as the remainder modulo 354, points to Torah page 231 in the book of Bamidbar (Numbers). These are its opening words:
שוק התרומה ואחר ישתה הנזיר יין זאת תורת …
The verse this place falls on is Bamidbar (Numbers) 6:20:
וְהֵנִיף אוֹתָם הַכֹּהֵן תְּנוּפָה לִפְנֵי ה׳ קֹדֶשׁ הוּא לַכֹּהֵן עַל חֲזֵה הַתְּנוּפָה וְעַל שׁוֹק הַתְּרוּמָה וְאַחַר יִשְׁתֶּה הַנָּזִיר יָיִן
And the priest shall wave them for a wave-offering before HaShem; this is holy for the priest, together with the breast of waving and the thigh of heaving; and after that the Nazirite may drink wine.
This is from the portion Naso. What it is about: The sotah — the test of the wife; the nazirite; the priestly blessing; the gifts of the tribal chiefs for the dedication of the altar.
The same number, 585, is given by these biblical names:
שעריה · שפרה
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) — 585. A Torah word with the same number is שרפה — “cremation” (Genesis 11:3).
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 18. A Torah word with the same number is חי — “alive” (Genesis 1:20).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 63. A Torah word with the same number is חנה — “to incline” (Genesis 26:17).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 2310.
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 136425.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 1845.
The word that comes out is בוגצ. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 101. A Torah word with the same number is יצא — “to go” (Genesis 1:12).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 957.
The number 585 appears in the classical books 4 times across 3 works. The earliest mention is יוסף תהלות (~1780).
The name שפרה appears in the Torah as a word 1 time. The first time is Exodus 1:15.
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 שפרה these are ש and ה. The Pentateuch has 15 such verses. The first of them is Genesis 49:31:
שמה קברו את אברהם ואת שרה אשתו שמה קברו את יצחק ואת רבקה אשתו ושמה קברתי את לאה
This is from the portion Vayechi. What it is about: Jacob blesses Ephraim and Manasseh and all his sons; Jacob's death and burial in Hebron; Joseph's death.
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.