The name Ostap in Hebrew letters is אוסטף. 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.
אוסטף
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is אוסטף. Ostap is the Ukrainian form of the Greek name Eustathios, from eu, “well”, and a root meaning “to stand”. Ostap Bender is the hero of the novel The Twelve Chairs by Ilf and Petrov (1928). In Hebrew it is written by sound. Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 156 — the same as the Torah word יוסף, “Joseph, son of Jacob”. That number points to Torah page 156 of 354 — in the portion Vayakhel. What that portion is about: The Sabbath comes before the work on the Sanctuary; the people bring more than enough; Bezalel and the craftsmen build the Tabernacle. The verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Exodus 23:27. Each of these steps is laid out below with its sources. Every figure can be checked by hand.
You wrote “Ostap” — this exact spelling is what was calculated: אוסטף. 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 אוסטף gives 156.
156
The number 156 is the Torah word יוסף — «Joseph, son of Jacob» (Genesis 30:24).
Fifty loops made he in the one curtain, and fifty loops made he in the edge of the curtain that was in the second set; the loops were opposite one to another.
This is from the portion Vayakhel. What it is about: The Sabbath comes before the work on the Sanctuary; the people bring more than enough; Bezalel and the craftsmen build the Tabernacle.
The same number, 156, is given by these Tanakh names:
Joseph יוסף · Ezekiel יחזקאל
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) — 876.
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 30. A Torah word with the same number is כי — “for, because, that” (Genesis 1:4).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 48. A Torah word with the same number is יובל — “ram's horn, jubilee” (Exodus 19:13).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 727. A Torah word with the same number is ואשתך — “and your wife” (Genesis 6:18).
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 10118.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 307. A Torah word with the same number is רבקה — “Rebekah, wife of Isaac” (Genesis 22:23).
The letters that come out are תפחנו — not a word that stands in the Pentateuch. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 544. A Torah word with the same number is ולקחת — “and you shall take” (Genesis 24:4).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 743. A Torah word with the same number is משגת — “can afford” (Leviticus 14:21).
The number 156 appears in the classical books 61 times across 24 works. The earliest mention is ספר קרניים (~1400).
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 — 156. 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. אוסטף has 5 letters: א Alef, ו Vav, ס Samekh, ט Tet, ף final Pe. The first letter is Alef, the last is final Pe.
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 אוסטף 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 אוסטף these are א and פ. The Pentateuch has exactly one such verse — Exodus 23:27:
את אימתי אשלח לפניך והמתי את כל העם אשר תבא בהם ונתתי את כל איביך אליך ערף
This is from the portion Mishpatim. What it is about: Laws of the servant, damages, theft and pledges; “an eye for an eye” as compensation; the sabbatical year; “we will do and we will hear”.
«Fifty loops made he in the one curtain, and fifty loops made he in the edge of the curtain that was in the second set; the loops were opposite one to another.»
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.
