The name Balaam in Hebrew letters is בלעם. 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.
בלעם
In short
Your name in Hebrew letters is בלעם. A Tanakh name: a prophet from Mesopotamia (first in Numbers 22:5; 61 mentions in the Tanakh). Adding up the numbers of its letters gives 142 — the same as the Torah word בלעם, “Balaam, son of Beor”. That number points to Torah page 142 of 354 — in the portion Tetzaveh. What that portion is about: “Command”: oil for the lamp; the priestly garments — the ephod, the breastplate with twelve stones; the consecration of the priests. The verse that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last is Genesis 10:22. Each of these steps is laid out below with its sources. Every figure can be checked by hand.
You wrote “Balaam” — this exact spelling is what was calculated: בלעם. 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 בלעם gives 142.
142
The number 142 is the Torah word בלעם — «Balaam, son of Beor» (Numbers 22:5).
And thou shalt make the whole ram smoke upon the altar; it is a burnt-offering unto HaShem; it is a sweet savour, an offering made by fire unto HaShem.
This is from the portion Tetzaveh. What it is about: “Command”: oil for the lamp; the priestly garments — the ephod, the breastplate with twelve stones; the consecration of the priests.
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) — 702. A Torah word with the same number is שבת — “sabbath” (Exodus 16:23).
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 — “also” (Genesis 3:6).
Cumulative: a letter plus all letters before it (mispar kidmi) — 578. A Torah word with the same number is בעשור — “on the tenth” (Leviticus 16:29).
Squares of the letter values (mispar perati) — 7404.
Building: the sum grows with each letter (mispar bone’eh) — 278. A Torah word with the same number is עבור — “for the sake of” (Genesis 3:17).
The letters that come out are שכזי — not a word that stands in the Pentateuch. Atbash: letters mirrored, alef for tav, bet for shin, and the number of the resulting word — 337.
Filling: the names of the letters are counted — alef, bet, gimel… (milui) — 696. A Torah word with the same number is הארצת — “the lands” (Genesis 26:3).
The number 142 appears in the classical books 10 times across 6 works. The earliest mention is מדרש לפירושים (~1450?).
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 — 142. 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. בלעם has 4 letters: ב Bet, ל Lamed, ע Ayin, ם final Mem. The first letter is Bet, the last is final Mem.
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 בלעם appears in the Torah as a word 52 times. The first time is Numbers 22:5. Another 3 times it stands with prefixes — “and”, “in”, “the”.
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 בלעם these are ב and מ. The Pentateuch has 10 such verses. The first of them is Genesis 10:22:
בני שם עילם ואשור וארפכשד ולוד וארם
This is from the portion Noach. What it is about: The flood and the ark; the rainbow as a sign of the covenant; the tower of Babel; ten generations from Noah to Abraham.
«And thou shalt make the whole ram smoke upon the altar; it is a burnt-offering unto HaShem; it is a sweet savour, an offering made by fire unto HaShem.»
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.
