The name Yaroslav in Hebrew letters is ירוסלב. 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.
ירוסלב
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is ירוסלב. A Slavic name made of yar, “fierce, bright”, and slava, “glory”. Yaroslav the Wise ruled Kiev in the 11th century. In Hebrew it is written by sound. Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 308 — the same as the Torah word שוב, “to return”. That number points to Torah page 308 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 Exodus 15:6. Each of these steps is laid out below with its sources. Every figure can be checked by hand.
You wrote “Yaroslav” — this exact spelling is what was calculated: ירוסלב. 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 ירוסלב gives 308.
308
The number 308 is the Torah word שוב — «to return» (Genesis 3:19).
And He afflicted thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that He might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every thing that proceedeth out of the mouth of HaShem doth man live.
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.
The same number, 308, is given by these Tanakh names:
Eleazar אלעזר
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) — 308. A Torah word with the same number is שוב — “to return” (Genesis 3:19).
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 20. A Torah word with the same number is היה — “to be, become” (Genesis 1:2).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 65. A Torah word with the same number is אדני — “my Lord” (Genesis 15:2).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 1234.
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 64940.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 1326.
The letters that come out are מגפחכש — not a word that stands in the Pentateuch. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 451. A Torah word with the same number is ישמעאל — “Ishmael, son of Abraham” (Genesis 16:11).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 1148.
The number 308 appears in the classical books 3 times across 3 works. The earliest mention is שער הפסוקים (~1573).
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 — 308. 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. ירוסלב has 6 letters: י Yod, ר Resh, ו Vav, ס Samekh, ל Lamed, ב Bet. The first letter is Yod, the last is Bet.
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 ירוסלב 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 ירוסלב these are י and ב. The Pentateuch has 5 such verses. The first of them is Exodus 15:6:
ימינך ה׳ נאדרי בכח ימינך ה׳ תרעץ אויב
This is from the portion Beshalach. What it is about: The parting of the sea and the song of Moses and Miriam; manna and quail; water from the rock; the war with Amalek.
The name ירוסלב has no such day. The numbers of the dates in a year cover 326 values out of 940, and 308 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.
