The name Shifra in Hebrew letters is שפרה. 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.
שפרה
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is שפרה. A Tanakh name: an Israelite woman (first in Exodus 1:15; 1 mention in the Tanakh). Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 585 — the same as the Torah word שרפה, “burning”. That number points to Torah page 231 of 354 — in the portion Naso. What that portion is about: The sotah — the test of the wife; the nazirite; the priestly blessing; the gifts of the tribal chiefs for the dedication of the altar. The verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Genesis 49:31. Each of these steps is laid out below with its sources. Every figure can be checked by hand.
You wrote “Shifra” — this exact spelling is what was calculated: שפרה. 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 שפרה gives 585.
585
The number 585 is the Torah word שרפה — «burning» (Genesis 11:3).
And the priest shall wave them for a wave-offering before HaShem; this is holy for the priest, together with the breast of waving and the thigh of heaving; and after that the Nazirite may drink wine.
This is from the portion Naso. What it is about: The sotah — the test of the wife; the nazirite; the priestly blessing; the gifts of the tribal chiefs for the dedication of the altar.
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) — 585. A Torah word with the same number is שרפה — “burning” (Genesis 11:3).
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 18. A Torah word with the same number is חי — “living” (Genesis 1:20).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 63. A Torah word with the same number is חנה — “to encamp” (Genesis 26:17).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 2310.
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 136425.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 1845.
The letters that come out are בוגצ — not a word that stands in the Pentateuch. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 101. A Torah word with the same number is יצא — “to go out” (Genesis 1:12).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 957.
The number 585 appears in the classical books 4 times across 3 works. The earliest mention is יוסף תהלות (~1780).
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 — 585. 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. שפרה has 4 letters: ש Shin, פ Pe, ר Resh, ה He. The first letter is Shin, the last is He.
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 שפרה appears in the Torah as a word 1 time. The first time is Exodus 1:15.
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 שפרה these are ש and ה. The Pentateuch has 15 such verses. The first of them is Genesis 49:31:
שמה קברו את אברהם ואת שרה אשתו שמה קברו את יצחק ואת רבקה אשתו ושמה קברתי את לאה
This is from the portion Vayechi. What it is about: Jacob blesses Ephraim and Manasseh and all his sons; Jacob's death and burial in Hebron; Joseph's death.
The name שפרה has no such day. The numbers of the dates in a year cover 326 values out of 940, and 585 is not among them. Half of all names are like this — neither good nor bad, just a fact of counting.
Add a date of birth and the verse of meeting from that week's portion is added to the reading.
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.
