Your name in the Torah: in Hebrew letters, as a number, with the verse it lands on and the sources. Computed, not divined. Free.
Your name
You did not choose your name. It was given — almost always after someone who came before you.
The number of your name is 124. The Torah word עדן — “Eden, the region of Adam's home” — has the same.
The verse of your name
There is a sentence with which, by custom, a person answers when asked who they are.
Yours is this one.
מיין ושכר יזיר חמץ יין וחמץ שכר לא ישתה וכל משרת ענבים לא ישתה וענבים לחים ויבשים לא יאכל
Numbers 6:3
The verse is chosen by the custom: it begins with the first letter of your name, מ, and ends with the last, ל.
The custom is written down in the Kitzur Shelah and in Sefer Ben Zion: “say it regularly and never forget it as long as you live.” The Rokeach gives the reason in Chochmat ha-Nefesh: a person is asked their name, and whoever does not remember cannot answer. The verse holds the name for them. Siddur ha-Rashban puts it more plainly: children were made to learn their verse by heart — so that if they were taken and forgot everything else, they would still know who they were.
The week you were born
Add your date of birth and we will show which portion the world was reading the week you appeared, and whether it holds a word of your number.
How rare this number is
A word with the number 124 appears in 35 of the 54 weekly portions.
You are not alone in this number
The same number belongs to these names:
What is left
We counted your name in one system. There are nine, and they give nine different numbers. When several systems lead to the same portion, the tradition reads that theme as strong. So far you have one.
Below — how this was counted, letter by letter.
Mendel — A name of biblical origin — its biblical spelling is used. If your name is spelled differently, correct the Hebrew spelling and the report is recomputed.
מנדל
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is מנדל. Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 124 — the same as the Torah word עדן, “Eden, the region of Adam's home”. That number points to Torah page 124 of 354 — in the portion Yitro. What that portion is about: Jethro's counsel on judges; standing at Sinai; the Ten Utterances; “you shall not make yourself an idol”. The verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Numbers 6:3. Each of these steps is laid out below with its sources. There are no predictions or judgments here — only the text of the Torah and arithmetic you can check.
Adding up the letters of the name מנדל gives 124.
124
The number 124 is the Torah word עדן — «Eden, the region of Adam's home» (Genesis 2:8).
The number 124, as the remainder modulo 354, points to Torah page 124 in the book of Shmot (Exodus). These are its opening words:
אלה הדברים אשר תדבר אל בני ישראל ויבא …
The verse this place falls on is Shmot (Exodus) 19:6:
וְאַתֶּם תִּהְיוּ־לִי מַמְלֶכֶת כֹּהֲנִים וְגוֹי קָדוֹשׁ אֵלֶּה הַדְּבָרִים אֲשֶׁר תְּדַבֵּר אֶל־בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל
and ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel.'
This is from the portion Yitro. What it is about: Jethro's counsel on judges; standing at Sinai; the Ten Utterances; “you shall not make yourself an idol”.
The same number, 124, is given by these biblical names:
יוחנן · עדן · אלעוזי · ידלף
Nine 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) — 124. A Torah word with the same number is עדן — “Eden, the region of Adam's home” (Genesis 2:8).
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) — 43. A Torah word with the same number is גם — “assemblage” (Genesis 3:6).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 455. A Torah word with the same number is פוטיפרע — “Poti-Phera, an Egyptian” (Genesis 41:45).
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 5016.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 348. A Torah word with the same number is חמש — “five” (Genesis 5:6).
The word that comes out is יטקכ. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 139. A Torah word with the same number is לקט — “to pick up, i.e.” (Genesis 31:46).
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 694.
The number 124 appears in the classical books 6 times across 6 works. The earliest mention is כל בו (~1300).
The name מנדל 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 מנדל these are מ and ל. The Pentateuch has 2 such verses. The first of them is Numbers 6:3:
מיין ושכר יזיר חמץ יין וחמץ שכר לא ישתה וכל משרת ענבים לא ישתה וענבים לחים ויבשים לא יאכל
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.
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.
Биньямин Пичхадзе, «Хумаш 354» (חומש 354), Бней-Брак, 2002 / התשס״ג · A calculation, not a prediction.