The name Gerasim in Hebrew letters is גרסים. Below: how its number adds up, which page of the Torah it falls on and what verse stands there. Everything is computed, nothing is guessed.
גרסים
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is גרסים. Gerasim is the Russian form of the Greek name Gerasimos, from “geras”, which means “honor”. It is the name of the main hero in Ivan Turgenev's story “Mumu”. In Hebrew it is written by sound. Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 313 — the same as the Torah word שחה, “to bow down”. That number points to Torah page 313 of 354 — in the portion Eikev. What that portion is about: “Because you will heed”: the land of seven fruits; the blessing after meals; manna as a test; the second paragraph of the Shema. The verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Deuteronomy 1:37. Each of these steps is laid out below with its sources. Every figure can be checked by hand.
You wrote “Gerasim” — this exact spelling is what was calculated: גרסים. A name from the Tanakh — its Tanakh spelling is used. If your name is spelled differently, correct the Hebrew spelling and the report is recomputed.
Adding up the letters of the name גרסים gives 313.
313
The number 313 is the Torah word שחה — «to bow down» (Genesis 18:2).
And know ye this day; for I speak not with your children that have not known, and that have not seen the chastisement of HaShem your G-d, His greatness, His mighty hand, and His outstretched arm,
This is from the portion Eikev. What it is about: “Because you will heed”: the land of seven fruits; the blessing after meals; manna as a test; the second paragraph of the Shema.
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) — 873.
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 16. A Torah word with the same number is אחז — “to seize” (Genesis 22:13).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 61. A Torah word with the same number is אני — “I” (Genesis 6:17).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 1256.
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 45309.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 1055.
The letters that come out are רגחמי — not a word that stands in the Pentateuch. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 261. A Torah word with the same number is אסר — “to bind, imprison” (Genesis 39:20).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 813. A Torah word with the same number is התחת — “am I in place of” (Genesis 30:2).
The number 313 appears in the classical books 9 times across 6 works. The earliest mention is בעל הטורים על התורה (~1300).
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 — 313. The channel posts one number a day, one verse and the Torah page it lands on. Nothing after it, no mailing list.
Hebrew is written from right to left. גרסים has 5 letters: ג Gimel, ר Resh, ס Samekh, י Yod, ם final Mem. The first letter is Gimel, the last is final Mem.
For an engraving, a sign or a tattoo, show the spelling to someone who reads Hebrew: transliterating a name is a choice, not the only option.
The name גרסים 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 גרסים these are ג and מ. The Pentateuch has exactly one such verse — Deuteronomy 1:37:
גם בי התאנף ה׳ בגללכם לאמר גם אתה לא תבא שם
This is from the portion Devarim. What it is about: Moses begins his address in the plains of Moab: judges, spies, forty years of wandering, the victories over Sihon and Og.
«And know ye this day; for I speak not with your children that have not known, and that have not seen the chastisement of HaShem your G-d, His greatness, His mighty hand, and His outstretched arm,»
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.
