Mordecai or Mordechai (Hebrew: מָרְדֳּכַי, Modern Mordekhay Tiberian Mordŏḵáy, IPA value: [mɔrdɔ̆ˈxɑj]) is one of the main personalities in the Book of Esther in the Hebrew Bible. He was the son of Jair, of the tribe of Benjamin.

Mordecai resided in Susa (Shushan), the metropolis of Persia (now Iran). He adopted his cousin Hadassah (Esther), an orphan child, whom he brought up as his own daughter. When "young virgins" were sought, she was brought into the presence of King Ahasuerus and was made queen in the place of the exiled queen Vashti. Mordecai was referred to subsequently as one of those who "sat in the king's gate" to indicate his position of closeness to the king. While holding this office, he discovered a plot of the king's chamberlain's, eunuchs Bigthan and Teresh, to assassinate the king. Because of Mordecai's vigilance, the plot was foiled. His services to the king in this matter were duly recorded in the king's royal diary.

Mordecai Ardon (Hebrew: מרדכי ארדון‎, July 13, 1896 – June 18, 1992), considered one of Israel's greatest painters.

Ardon was born Max Bronstein in 1896 in Tuchów, Galicia (then Austria-Hungary, now Poland). In 1933 he emigrated to Jerusalem in Mandate Palestine. He was granted Palestinian citizenship in 1936 and changed his name to Mordecai Ardon.

He participated in the Venice Biennale of 1968.

Beginning in the 1950s Mordechai Ardon adopted a complex system of symbolic images in his paintings, taken from the Jewish Mystical tradition (Kabbalah), from the Bible and from a tangible reality. In his painting "Gates of Light", for example, he expressed "the inner mystery and timelessness of the landscape." His work seeks to impart a cosmic dimension to the present, linking it to antiquity and mystery. The same approach can be found in "At the Gates of Jerusalem" (1967), which shows the attempt to "convey his feelings about the cosmic significance of Israel’s return to the Old City of Jerusalem during the Six-Day War". "Bird near a yellow wall" (1950) demonstrates his simplistic involvement with the Holocaust, a subject to which he was one of the few Israeli artists to devote a phase of his work, at that time.