SAPIR 861

How your name is written in the letters of the Torah

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

Varfolomey

Tap the letters of your name and add up its number yourself

The number of your name

Varfolomey (ורפולומיי) — Varfolomey is a Russian name for boys that comes from Aramaic: the name “bar Talmai” means “son of Talmai”.
And the same number belongs to the Torah word שלחן — “table”.

Your word in the Torah

The word שלחן — “table” — has the same number as your name. Here is the verse where it first appears:

ועשית שלחן עצי שטים אמתים ארכו ואמה רחבו ואמה וחצי קמתו

Exodus 25:23

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.

ויקרא אלהים לרקיע שמים ויהי ערב ויהי בקר יום שני

Genesis 1:8

The verse is chosen by the custom: it begins with the first letter of your name, ו, and ends with the last, י.

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

Torah portions with a word of number 388: 12 of 54

How to read your number

Fact. The letters of the name ורפולומיי add up to 388. Plain addition — you can check it yourself.

Meaning. There is a Torah word with the same number — שלחן (“table”). A matching sum does not mean the word is 'about you'; it is a reason to look at what in it matters to you.

A question for yourself. What in this do you recognise in yourself — and what would you like to strengthen?

Practice. This week: open the verse of your name, read it slowly three times and write down one thought that stays with you.

What next

This card is free.

Full name reading, PDF · ₪59

The Family Book · ₪199

Hand-made reading — done personally · ₪390

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The nine numbers of your name

388standard388with finals37reduced100ordinal1623cumulative49208squares2574building359atbash821filling

The tradition counts a name in nine ways, each giving its own number. 6 of the nine have a word of their own in the Torah. We showed one. The rest are in the full report.

A verse for what you need

Pick a theme — we show a Tanakh verse on it that contains a word with your name's number (388).

Our verse — for two

Type the name of someone close. We find the verse that begins with a letter of one name and ends with a letter of the other — your pair's verse.

My days of the year

The days when the number of the Hebrew date equals your name's number, and the Shabbat when the world reads the portion of your verse — straight into your phone's calendar.

Add my days to the calendar

7 days with your verse

Every morning in Telegram — your verse, how to read it in Latin letters, and one new word. Half a minute a day. After seven days the verse stays with you.

Start in Telegram

Full report — free for the first hundred Send the verse of my name to Telegramfree, one tap

ורפולומיי

In short

Your name in Hebrew letters is ורפולומיי. Varfolomey is a Russian name for boys that comes from Aramaic: the name “bar Talmai” means “son of Talmai”. Today this name is found mostly in Russia. In Hebrew it is written by sound. Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 388 — the same as the Torah word שלחן, “table”. That number points to Torah page 34 of 354 — in the portion Chayei Sarah. What that portion is about: Sarah's death and the purchase of the cave of Machpelah; the servant seeks a wife for Isaac; Rebecca at the well; Abraham's death. The verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Genesis 1:8. Each of these steps is laid out below with its sources. Every figure can be checked by hand.

You wrote “Varfolomey” — this exact spelling is what was calculated: ורפולומיי. Spelled by the Academy of the Hebrew Language rules for foreign names. If your name is spelled differently, correct the Hebrew spelling and the report is recomputed.

Adding up the letters of the name ורפולומיי gives 388.

388

The number 388 is the Torah word שלחן — «table» (Exodus 25:23).

✓ Verify

The number 388, as the remainder modulo 354, points to Torah page 34 in the book of Bereshit (Genesis).

The verse this place falls on is Bereshit (Genesis) 23:2:

וַתָּמָת שָׂרָה בְּקִרְיַת אַרְבַּע הִוא חֶבְרוֹן בְּאֶרֶץ כְּנָעַן וַיָּבֹא אַבְרָהָם לִסְפֹּד לְשָׂרָה וְלִבְכֹּתָהּ

And Sarah died in Kiriatharba--the same is Hebron--in the land of Canaan; and Abraham came to mourn for Sarah, and to weep for her.

This is from the portion Chayei Sarah. What it is about: Sarah's death and the purchase of the cave of Machpelah; the servant seeks a wife for Isaac; Rebecca at the well; Abraham's death.

Other 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) — 388. A Torah word with the same number is שלחן — “table” (Exodus 25:23).

Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 37. A Torah word with the same number is גדל — “to grow, be great” (Genesis 12:2).

Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 100. A Torah word with the same number is על — “on, over” (Genesis 1:2).

Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 1623.

Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 49208.

Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 2574.

The letters that come out are פגופכפיממ — not a word that stands in the Pentateuch. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 359. A Torah word with the same number is נטש — “to leave, allow” (Genesis 31:28).

Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 821. A Torah word with the same number is והשקית — “and you shall give drink” (Numbers 20:8).

The number 388 appears in the classical books 5 times across 3 works. The earliest mention is שער הפסוקים (~1573).

The name ורפולומיי 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 ורפולומיי these are ו and י. The Pentateuch has 223 such verses. The first of them is Genesis 1:8:

ויקרא אלהים לרקיע שמים ויהי ערב ויהי בקר יום שני

This is from the portion Bereshit. What it is about: Creation in six days and the Sabbath; Adam and Eve in the garden; Cain and Abel; ten generations to Noah.

Name report — free for the first hundred Name and date

The full message

Every letter of the name explained, the words and namesakes with references, the Hebrew date, the letter and tribe of the month, day 861 of your life (±1), the psalm by age, the attestations from the classical books — a PDF sent to your email.

The number of the day, every morning

Every date has a number too. Once a year it will match the number of your name — 388. The channel posts one number a day, one verse and the Torah page it lands on. Nothing after it, no mailing list.

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Your name's day

Any name written in Hebrew letters is a number: ורפולומיי = 388. And every date has a number of its own. There is a day in the year when the two coincide.

2026-11-0424 Cheshvan 5787in 11 days

The verse of that day

«And Sarah died in Kiriatharba--the same is Hebron--in the land of Canaan; and Abraham came to mourn for Sarah, and to weep for her.»

Bereshit (Genesis) 23:2 · 34 / 354

Half of all names have such a day.

Card “my name's day”2026-11-04 →

How it is counted

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.

Binyamin Pichkhadze, «Chumash 354» (חומש 354), Bnei Brak, 2002 · Addition, not prophecy.

Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (WLC), CC BY 4.0

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How your name is written in the letters of the Torah