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 353. The Torah word נגש — “to be or come” — 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.
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 353 appears in 27 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.
Simcha — 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.
שמחה
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is שמחה. Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 353 — the same as the Torah word נגש, “to be or come”. That number points to Torah page 353 of 354 — in the portion Vezot HaBracha. What that portion is about: “This is the blessing”: Moses blesses the tribes; he sees the land from the mountain; Moses dies — “no prophet arose like Moses”. 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 שמחה gives 353.
353
The number 353 is the Torah word נגש — «to be or come» (Genesis 18:23).
The number 353, as the remainder modulo 354, points to Torah page 353 in the book of Devarim (Deuteronomy). These are its opening words:
ואל עמו תביאנו ידיו רב לו ועזר מצריו …
The verse this place falls on is Devarim (Deuteronomy) 33:7:
וְזֹאת לִיהוּדָה וַיֹּאמַר שְׁמַע ה׳ קוֹל יְהוּדָה וְאֶל־עַמּוֹ תְּבִיאֶנּוּ יָדָיו רָב לוֹ וְעֵזֶר מִצָּרָיו תִּהְיֶה ס
And this for Judah, and he said: Hear, HaShem, the voice of Judah, and bring him in unto his people; his hands shall contend for him, and Thou shalt be a help against his adversaries.
This is from the portion Vezot HaBracha. What it is about: “This is the blessing”: Moses blesses the tribes; he sees the land from the mountain; Moses dies — “no prophet arose like Moses”.
The same number, 353, is given by these biblical names:
אלישיב · גשן · שבנא · אשבן
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) — 353. A Torah word with the same number is נגש — “to be or come” (Genesis 18:23).
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 20. A Torah word with the same number is היה — “to exist, i.e. be or become, come to pass” (Genesis 1:2).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 47. A Torah word with the same number is אולי — “if not” (Genesis 16:2).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 1291.
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 91689.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 1341.
The word that comes out is ביסצ. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 162. A Torah word with the same number is בנימין — “Binjamin, youngest son of Jacob” (Genesis 35:18).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 864.
The number 353 appears in the classical books 3 times across 3 works. The earliest mention is ספר קרניים (~1400).
The name שמחה does not stand as a separate word in the Torah, but appears 2 times with prefixes — first in Genesis 31:27.
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 שמחה 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.