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.
Simeon (שמעון) stands in the Torah as a word of its own — 20 times. First in Genesis 29:33.
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.
שנים עשר אנחנו אחים בני אבינו האחד איננו והקטן היום את אבינו בארץ כנען
Genesis 42:32
The verse is chosen by the custom: it begins with the first letter of your name, ש, and ends with the last, נ.
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 466 appears in 28 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.
Simeon — 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.
שמעון
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is שמעון. From “to hear”: “the Lord has heard” (Genesis 29:33). Jacob and Leah’s second son. Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 466 — the same as the Torah word שמעון, “Shimon, one of Jacob's sons, also the tribe…”. That number points to Torah page 112 of 354 — in the portion Bo. What that portion is about: Locusts, darkness and the death of the firstborn; the Passover lamb; the exodus from Egypt; the commandment of tefillin. The verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Genesis 42:32. 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 שמעון gives 466.
466
The number 466 is the Torah word שמעון — «Shimon, one of Jacob's sons, also the tribe…» (Genesis 29:33).
The number 466, as the remainder modulo 354, points to Torah page 112 in the book of Shmot (Exodus). These are its opening words:
ואת בתינו הציל ויקד העם וישתחוו וילכו ויעשו …
The verse this place falls on is Shmot (Exodus) 12:27:
וַאֲמַרְתֶּם זֶבַח־פֶּסַח הוּא לַה׳ אֲשֶׁר פָּסַח עַל־בָּתֵּי בְנֵי־יִשְׂרָאֵל בְּמִצְרַיִם בְּנָגְפּוֹ אֶת־מִצְרַיִם וְאֶת־בָּתֵּינוּ הִצִּיל וַיִּקֹּד הָעָם וַיִּשְׁתַּחֲוּוּ
that ye shall say: It is the sacrifice of HaShem'S passover, for that He passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when He smote the Egyptians, and delivered our houses.' And the people bowed the head and worshipped.
This is from the portion Bo. What it is about: Locusts, darkness and the death of the firstborn; the Passover lamb; the exodus from Egypt; the commandment of tefillin.
The same number, 466, is given by these biblical names:
שמעון · ניות · קישון · נוית
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) — 1116. A Torah word with the same number is שרירות — “obstinacy” (Deuteronomy 29:18).
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 25. A Torah word with the same number is כה — “like this, i.e. by implication” (Genesis 15:5).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 70. A Torah word with the same number is כן — “set upright” (Genesis 1:7).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 1781.
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 99036.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 1932.
The word that comes out is ביזפט. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 108. A Torah word with the same number is חק — “an enactment” (Genesis 47:22).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 688.
The number 466 appears in the classical books 2 times across 2 works. The earliest mention is בעל הטורים על התורה (~1300).
The name שמעון appears in the Torah as a word 20 times. The first time is Genesis 29:33. Another 4 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 שמעון these are ש and נ. The Pentateuch has 4 such verses. The first of them is Genesis 42:32:
שנים עשר אנחנו אחים בני אבינו האחד איננו והקטן היום את אבינו בארץ כנען
This is from the portion Miketz. What it is about: Pharaoh's dreams of seven cows and seven ears; Joseph rules Egypt; the brothers come for grain; the cup in Benjamin's sack.
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.