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.
Mordecai (מרדכי) — A name of Babylonian origin. Esther’s cousin and guardian who would not bow to Haman (Esther).
And the same number belongs to the Torah word עדר — “an arrangement, i.e. muster”.
274 and 274.
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.
מלאתך ודמעך לא תאחר בכור בניך תתן לי
Exodus 22:28
The verse is chosen by the custom: it begins with the first letter of your name, מ, and ends with the last, י.
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 274 appears in 8 of the 54 weekly portions. That is a rare number: most numbers appear more often.
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.
Mordecai — 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.
מרדכי
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is מרדכי. A name of Babylonian origin. Esther’s cousin and guardian who would not bow to Haman (Esther). Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 274 — the same as the Torah word עדר, “an arrangement, i.e. muster”. That number points to Torah page 274 of 354 — in the portion Pinchas. What that portion is about: The covenant of peace with Phinehas; the second census; the daughters of Zelophehad and inheritance; Joshua the successor; the festival offerings. The verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Exodus 22:28. 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 מרדכי gives 274.
274
The number 274 is the Torah word עדר — «an arrangement, i.e. muster» (Genesis 29:2).
The number 274, as the remainder modulo 354, points to Torah page 274 in the book of Bamidbar (Numbers). These are its opening words:
בני ישראל אתו וכל העדה ויעש משה כאשר …
The verse this place falls on is Bamidbar (Numbers) 27:21:
וְלִפְנֵי אֶלְעָזָר הַכֹּהֵן יַעֲמֹד וְשָׁאַל לוֹ בְּמִשְׁפַּט הָאוּרִים לִפְנֵי ה׳ עַל־פִּיו יֵצְאוּ וְעַל־פִּיו יָבֹאוּ הוּא וְכָל־בְּנֵי־יִשְׂרָאֵל אִתּוֹ וְכָל־הָעֵדָה
And he shall stand before Eleazar the priest, who shall inquire for him by the judgment of the Urim before HaShem; at his word shall they go out, and at his word they shall come in, both he, and all the children of Israel with him, even all the congregation.'
This is from the portion Pinchas. What it is about: The covenant of peace with Phinehas; the second census; the daughters of Zelophehad and inheritance; Joshua the successor; the festival offerings.
The same number, 274, is given by these biblical names:
מרדכי · עדר · ערד · דרע
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) — 274. A Torah word with the same number is עדר — “an arrangement, i.e. muster” (Genesis 29:2).
Reduced, each letter to one digit (mispar katan) — 13. A Torah word with the same number is אחד — “united, i.e. one” (Genesis 1:5).
Ordinal: alef 1, bet 2 … tav 22 (mispar siduri) — 58. A Torah word with the same number is נח — “Noach, the patriarch of the flood” (Genesis 5:29).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 1080.
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 42116.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 1062.
The word that comes out is יגקלמ. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 183.
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 1144.
The number 274 appears in the classical books 24 times across 11 works. The earliest mention is ספר חסידים (~1200).
The name מרדכי 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 מרדכי these are מ and י. The Pentateuch has 2 such verses. The first of them is Exodus 22:28:
מלאתך ודמעך לא תאחר בכור בניך תתן לי
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”.
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.