Code of the day · 2027-02-20
Saturday · 13 Adar 5787
אֵלֶּה קריאי הָעֵדָה נְשִׂיאֵי מַטּוֹת אֲבוֹתָם רָאשֵׁי אַלְפֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל הֵם
«These were the elect of the congregation, the princes of the tribes of their fathers; they were the heads of the thousands of Israel.»
Bamidbar (Numbers) 1:16 · page 218 of 354
This is from the portion “Bamidbar” (Numbers 1–4). What it is about: The census in the desert: 603,550 men; the order of the camps around the Tabernacle; the Levites and their service.
Nobody picked it: the letters of today's date add up to 218, and that is page 218 of the 354 pages of the Torah — the first five books of the Bible.
The word with this number is read this very week — and it is rare in the whole Torah.
The same number was already written down around 1300: ריח = ליל פסח
In the database it appears 9 times across 5 books. We do not claim this proves anything: we show who wrote it and when, and we recounted it ourselves.
Person of the day
Three names from three eras sharing one small number
The tribe of which it is said that it bent its shoulder to the burden. By tradition, those who studied while their brother traded.
Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, 1910–2012. He lived to a hundred and two, kept the same small flat in Jerusalem to the end, and for his last decades was the address to which the Lithuanian world brought its hardest questions.
A writer who changed how the flow of thought is rendered in the novel. In A Room of One's Own she set out what a woman needs in order to write.
What connects them
For all three the main thing happened not alone: there was always a second — an ally, a rival, or someone they answered for.
Two is always another person. A day for conversation, for agreement, for the other side. A decision made alone today will have to be revisited together.
Whom should you speak to directly today, instead of deciding for both of you?
How the small number works: the digits are added until one remains. Non-Hebrew names are written in Hebrew letters by ordinary transliteration; variants exist, and the number depends on the spelling. We show the letters so it can be checked. This is a coincidence of counting, not a claim about fate. It is interesting exactly insofar as you can see how it was counted.
How it is obtained
13 + 205 = 218 · total
This week's portion
Tetzaveh תצוה
This Hebrew date across 301 years
A Torah word with this number
A rare meeting: the number of today's date and a word from the portion read this week have come together.
A name from this week's portion
This figure acts in the portion read this week. Their number is shown alongside — with no claim that it matches anything.
Remembered today
1895–1986. He came from Belarus to New York and became the man the world wrote to with questions that had no precedent: artificial respiration, a lift on the Sabbath, an inheritance. He answered by letter — eight volumes of them.
Psalms of the day
Under the customary division of the book of Psalms across the thirty days of the month, today's reading is 69-71.
Text: Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible, CC BY 4.0. The four-letter Name is not printed in our output and is replaced by ה׳.
Reading of the reduced number
Two is always another person. A day for conversation, for agreement, for the other side. A decision made alone today will have to be revisited together.
What follows is an interpretation, not a calculation. The reduced number comes from adding the digits; everything else on this page can be checked, and this cannot.
More
- The number 218 in full
- Calculator, 25 methods
- Method and figures
- This date across 301 years
- Your own birth code
Text and morphology: Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible, CC BY 4.0. Calendar and portion boundaries: hebcal. Memorial dates follow tradition or the sources noted with each entry.