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.
Tova (טובה) stands in the Torah as a word of its own — 8 times. First in Genesis 15:15.
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.
טרם ישכבו ואנשי העיר אנשי סדם נסבו על הבית מנער ועד זקן כל העם מקצה
Genesis 19:4
The verse is chosen by the custom: it begins with the first letter of your name, ט, 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 22 appears in 25 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.
Tova — 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.
טובה
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is טובה. Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 22 — the same as the Torah word יחד, “a unit, i.e.”. That number points to Torah page 22 of 354 — in the portion Lech Lecha. What that portion is about: “Go forth”: Abraham leaves Haran; the promise of land and offspring; the covenant between the pieces; circumcision. The verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Genesis 19:4. 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 טובה gives 22.
22
The number 22 is the Torah word יחד — «a unit, i.e.» (Genesis 13:6).
Twenty-two letters of the alphabet; the alphabetical acrostics of Lamentations.
The number 22, as the remainder modulo 354, points to Torah page 22 in the book of Bereshit (Genesis). These are its opening words:
עשן ולפיד אש אשר עבר בין הגזרים האלה …
The verse this place falls on is Bereshit (Genesis) 15:17:
וַיְהִי הַשֶּׁמֶשׁ בָּאָה וַעֲלָטָה הָיָה וְהִנֵּה תַנּוּר עָשָׁן וְלַפִּיד אֵשׁ אֲשֶׁר עָבַר בֵּין הַגְּזָרִים הָאֵלֶּה
And it came to pass, that, when the sun went down, and there was thick darkness, behold a smoking furnace, and a flaming torch that passed between these pieces.
This is from the portion Lech Lecha. What it is about: “Go forth”: Abraham leaves Haran; the promise of land and offspring; the covenant between the pieces; circumcision.
The same number, 22, is given by these biblical names:
יהוא
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) — 22. A Torah word with the same number is יחד — “a unit, i.e.” (Genesis 13:6).
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 22. A Torah word with the same number is יחד — “a unit, i.e.” (Genesis 13:6).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 22. A Torah word with the same number is יחד — “a unit, i.e.” (Genesis 13:6).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 84. A Torah word with the same number is ידע — “to know” (Genesis 3:5).
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 146. A Torah word with the same number is קום — “to rise” (Genesis 4:8).
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 63. A Torah word with the same number is חנה — “to incline” (Genesis 26:17).
The word that comes out is נפשצ. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 520. A Torah word with the same number is שכר — “payment of contract” (Genesis 15:1).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 849. A Torah word with the same number is אמתחת — “something expansive, i.e. a bag” (Genesis 42:27).
The number 22 appears in the classical books 22 times across 16 works. The earliest mention is דרושי שער הכוונות (~1573).
The name טובה appears in the Torah as a word 8 times. The first time is Genesis 15:15. Another 9 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 טובה these are ט and ה. The Pentateuch has 2 such verses. The first of them is Genesis 19:4:
טרם ישכבו ואנשי העיר אנשי סדם נסבו על הבית מנער ועד זקן כל העם מקצה
This is from the portion Vayera. What it is about: Three visitors at Abraham's tent; the plea for Sodom; the birth of Isaac; the binding of Isaac on Mount Moriah.
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.