Lu
Ann Ballew, a
local magistrate in Tennessee made news just
a few weeks ago in the midst of a child
support hearing. The hearing concerned
itself with the fate of a seven month old
boy named Messiah DeShawn Martin.
Ballew was so distracted (and religiously offended) by the child’s first name that she put aside the business that had brought the parties to court, and instead ordered the immediate change of the child’s first name from Messiah to Martin.
I’m not a lawyer, so I have no idea whether Ballew’s action will ultimately stand. But it turns out that a number of states do in fact have rules about what parents can and cannot name their kids! Amy and I named Siona and Avi in California and did not know that the state prohibits families from using any symbols that aren’t part of the 26 letters of the alphabet.
Prohibited accent marks and tildas are, of course, small potatoes when it comes to even larger questions about what constitutes a truly offensive name. For example, there was the case in New Jersey in 2008 when a family got into a tiff with the local grocery store when the store refused to decorate the cake for a 3 year old’s birthday party as requested, because the boy’s name was Adolf Hitler Campbell.
We Americans pride ourselves on our expansive rights and freedoms, so sometimes it takes an extreme case, like the Campbell’s, for us to really give thought to what our society is comfortable with and what it isn’t.
Other countries have far stricter standards. In Denmark, children’s names must come from the list of the 7000 official government approved names. In Germany, you cannot choose a gender neutral name – the name you choose must clearly reflect the child’s physical gender status. The pressure for names to conform is so strong that in Norway, a mother was put in jail for two days for naming her son Gesher, the Hebrew word for bridge!
Responding to that moment in the Creation story, which we read every single Rosh HaShanah as we commemorate the Creation of the World, when Adam is tasked by God with bestowing names on every animal that he meets, our Reform movement’s Women’s Torah Commentary notes that: “The first human task is naming the world.”
The same is true for parents. The first thing that we have to do when we become parents is decide what we shall call these wonderfully mysterious creatures that have just become the focal points of our lives.
On this birthday of the world, in which we reflect again on the nature of Creation, let us reflect this morning on several Jewish texts which frame the issue of naming…challenging us to consider what it is, exactly, that’s in a name.
We’ll begin with the question of the Hebrew term for the word “name,” which is sheim. Where does that word come from? Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, a founder of Modern Orthodoxy in 19th century Germany offers us one explanation in Text Number One, part of his commentary on the Creation Story:
Man bestows names on the creatures, not as God, Who alone can recognize the essence of things, but merely as a living nefesh (soul), subjectively from his individual viewpoint. […] Based on these impressions, he assigns names to the creatures. Through these names, he expresses his impressions of the creatures (this constitutes his whole knowledge of them), and thereby assigns the creatures theirsham – their “there” – their “place”…thus their sheim (name) […] Man names things […] through the impressions he receives of them, according to what they are to him. But mortal man cannot grasp the [actual] essence of things.
There are three important things that Hirsch is trying to teach us in this text: first of all…that the word sheim (the Hebrew word for ‘name’) is a pun on the word sham, which means “there”…a word that speaks not just of actual geographic location…but also a sense of categorization (in this case of species)…After all, in naming the animals, Adam is helping them to find out where their place is in the grand scheme of Creation.
But the other important thing to note is that Hirsch arrives at that conclusion based on a larger philosophical presumption that he has: namely [pun intended] that Adam and all human beings are naming subjectively.
When I read this passage, I thought back to my group of friends and peers who all started having children at around the same time. And, in talking to everyone about the process that they were using to come up with names, people fell into two camps. One group was the “we are definitely going to decide the name in advance” camp that was prepared to stick with the name no matter what.
And the other group was of the mind that they were walking into the hospital with a list of possible names (two lists if the gender of the baby was unknown) because they wanted to meet the baby to decide if she really looked, and felt, like an Emily…or a Miranda.
One presumes that Hirsch would have put himself into the latter category…names are subjective. According to him, we experience the creature we are to name by spending time in his or her presence, and then we take our best guess at coming up with a name that summarizes what that creature is about.
Finally, we should note that in his opening sentence, Hirsch goes to great lengths to insist that naming is an act that human beings are privileged to do, and that it has nothing to do with God.
Our Tradition is not of one mind when it comes to that question. To begin, take a look at Text Number Two [from B. Kiddushin 30b]:
There are three partners in the creation of a person: The Holy One, Blessed is He, a person’s father, and a person’s mother.
It is clear from the Talmudic text that God is very much a part of the creation of each human being – and, in a sense, partners with parents as we bring new life into the world.
Dr. Avivah Zornberg, whom I consider to be my teacher, once suggested that part of what it means to be human is to ‘cast God’s shadow into the world’…which is to say: that everything that we do…particularly something as significant as naming…is an act that is not just our’s alone, but one that involves God.
Abraham Joshua Heschel expressed this in his own poetry, in Text Number Three, when he wrote:
I am a trace of You in the world,
And everything is like a door.
Let us all trace that trace of You.
And through all things go to You.
I’m fond of Heschel’s sentiments because the poetry speaks of the power of the Namer. We are not just choosing a series of letters to record on a state birth certificate and on a federal social security form. We are choosing a name that will on some level shape this child’s personality…how she or he sees themselves, and how others see them too. We are choosing a name that says something about the values that each of us as parents hold dear.
There is, then, great power…power that is almost god-like, when it comes to the opportunity to name another living being. As parents we are, in this sense, partners with God when we engage in the sacred act of bestowing names upon our children.
When Heschel writes “I am a trace of You” I think what he is saying is that every parent is a Trace of God. God participates in the creation and naming of every child by way of us. When we make ourselves present, and when we name…when we give thought to this child’s future personality, and the values we hope this baby will hold dear…so does God.
We all know, of course, that our influence on our children’s personalities is limited. That’s true in terms of our everyday parenting, and it’s true with regards to the long-term impact of the names we choose for our offspring. The powerful thing about living is that we each have the ability to make a name for ourselves…to create a reputation that has nothing to do with the name that our parents chose for us.
The late Israeli poet Zelda evoked this famously when she wrote these words, in Text Number Four:
Everyone has a name
given to him by God
and given to him by his parents
Everyone has a name
given to him by his stature
and the way he smiles
and given to him by his clothing
Everyone has a name
given to him by the mountains
and given to him by the walls
Everyone has a name
given to him by the stars
and given to him by his neighbors
Everyone has a name
given to him by his sins
and given to him by his longing
Everyone has a name
given to him by his enemies
and given to him by his love
Everyone has a name
given to him by his holidays
and given to him by his work
Everyone has a name
given to him by the seasons
and given to him by his blindness
Everyone has a name
given to him by the sea and
given to him by his death.
At the end of the day, the names that we give to our children give shape to their early years….to the formative experiences that they have that will put them on the road to the rest of their lives, and all of the opportunities that Life will have, and that they will have, to name themselves.
There is something fascinating to me about names….in the sense that they mark the confluence between our pasts and our futures. Our names are associated with the past, in the sense that…for those of us who invoke the Ashkenazi or Eastern European Jewish tradition, we often name our children in memory of those who came before us and have already passed on.
But our names are also associated with the future. Because, if we agree with Zelda’s assessment that so much of our names are derived from our reputations, from the choices we make, and the experiences we have…then we are creating a name for ourselves which will potentially be invoked by the next generation or two in the future. That is to say…the choices that each of us make in our lives today will dictate, to at least a certain degree, whether our names live on after us: whether our loved one’s will choose to honor our memory by striving to adopt the values that were dear to us. And our own choices will influence whether our loved ones who live on will decide to name their children…after us.
Elie Wiesel speaks beautifully of this continuity when he writes, in Text Number Five:
In Jewish history, a name has its own history and its own memory. It connects beings with their origins. To retrace its path is then to embark on an adventure in which the destiny of a single word becomes one with that of a community; it is to undertake a passionate and enriching quest for all those who may live in your name.
“The destiny of a single word…” such a beautiful turn of phrase, and such a compelling allusion to the role that naming has in our Creation Story.
On this Rosh HaShanah, at a moment in our country’s history when our neighbors are comfortable naming their children Messiah and Hitler, let us foster a sense of humility and understanding that the choices we make for our children in this department most certainly do matter. They may not explicitly spell out what our children’s destinies will be. But they do set our kids, as we ourselves were set by our parents and grandparents, on the path toward the people they, and we, are fated to become.
Shanah Tovah.
Selected Bibliography:
“Naming Adam Naming Creation” by Professor James Hatley at http://bit.ly/1a5vfR6
“The Power of Names and Naming” by Rabbi Bruce Kadden at http://bit.ly/17NMHDy
“Can You Name Your Baby Messiah?” by Dahlia Lithwick at http://slate.me/16JbZUh
Ballew was so distracted (and religiously offended) by the child’s first name that she put aside the business that had brought the parties to court, and instead ordered the immediate change of the child’s first name from Messiah to Martin.
I’m not a lawyer, so I have no idea whether Ballew’s action will ultimately stand. But it turns out that a number of states do in fact have rules about what parents can and cannot name their kids! Amy and I named Siona and Avi in California and did not know that the state prohibits families from using any symbols that aren’t part of the 26 letters of the alphabet.
Prohibited accent marks and tildas are, of course, small potatoes when it comes to even larger questions about what constitutes a truly offensive name. For example, there was the case in New Jersey in 2008 when a family got into a tiff with the local grocery store when the store refused to decorate the cake for a 3 year old’s birthday party as requested, because the boy’s name was Adolf Hitler Campbell.
We Americans pride ourselves on our expansive rights and freedoms, so sometimes it takes an extreme case, like the Campbell’s, for us to really give thought to what our society is comfortable with and what it isn’t.
Other countries have far stricter standards. In Denmark, children’s names must come from the list of the 7000 official government approved names. In Germany, you cannot choose a gender neutral name – the name you choose must clearly reflect the child’s physical gender status. The pressure for names to conform is so strong that in Norway, a mother was put in jail for two days for naming her son Gesher, the Hebrew word for bridge!
Responding to that moment in the Creation story, which we read every single Rosh HaShanah as we commemorate the Creation of the World, when Adam is tasked by God with bestowing names on every animal that he meets, our Reform movement’s Women’s Torah Commentary notes that: “The first human task is naming the world.”
The same is true for parents. The first thing that we have to do when we become parents is decide what we shall call these wonderfully mysterious creatures that have just become the focal points of our lives.
On this birthday of the world, in which we reflect again on the nature of Creation, let us reflect this morning on several Jewish texts which frame the issue of naming…challenging us to consider what it is, exactly, that’s in a name.
We’ll begin with the question of the Hebrew term for the word “name,” which is sheim. Where does that word come from? Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, a founder of Modern Orthodoxy in 19th century Germany offers us one explanation in Text Number One, part of his commentary on the Creation Story:
Man bestows names on the creatures, not as God, Who alone can recognize the essence of things, but merely as a living nefesh (soul), subjectively from his individual viewpoint. […] Based on these impressions, he assigns names to the creatures. Through these names, he expresses his impressions of the creatures (this constitutes his whole knowledge of them), and thereby assigns the creatures theirsham – their “there” – their “place”…thus their sheim (name) […] Man names things […] through the impressions he receives of them, according to what they are to him. But mortal man cannot grasp the [actual] essence of things.
There are three important things that Hirsch is trying to teach us in this text: first of all…that the word sheim (the Hebrew word for ‘name’) is a pun on the word sham, which means “there”…a word that speaks not just of actual geographic location…but also a sense of categorization (in this case of species)…After all, in naming the animals, Adam is helping them to find out where their place is in the grand scheme of Creation.
But the other important thing to note is that Hirsch arrives at that conclusion based on a larger philosophical presumption that he has: namely [pun intended] that Adam and all human beings are naming subjectively.
When I read this passage, I thought back to my group of friends and peers who all started having children at around the same time. And, in talking to everyone about the process that they were using to come up with names, people fell into two camps. One group was the “we are definitely going to decide the name in advance” camp that was prepared to stick with the name no matter what.
And the other group was of the mind that they were walking into the hospital with a list of possible names (two lists if the gender of the baby was unknown) because they wanted to meet the baby to decide if she really looked, and felt, like an Emily…or a Miranda.
One presumes that Hirsch would have put himself into the latter category…names are subjective. According to him, we experience the creature we are to name by spending time in his or her presence, and then we take our best guess at coming up with a name that summarizes what that creature is about.
Finally, we should note that in his opening sentence, Hirsch goes to great lengths to insist that naming is an act that human beings are privileged to do, and that it has nothing to do with God.
Our Tradition is not of one mind when it comes to that question. To begin, take a look at Text Number Two [from B. Kiddushin 30b]:
There are three partners in the creation of a person: The Holy One, Blessed is He, a person’s father, and a person’s mother.
It is clear from the Talmudic text that God is very much a part of the creation of each human being – and, in a sense, partners with parents as we bring new life into the world.
Dr. Avivah Zornberg, whom I consider to be my teacher, once suggested that part of what it means to be human is to ‘cast God’s shadow into the world’…which is to say: that everything that we do…particularly something as significant as naming…is an act that is not just our’s alone, but one that involves God.
Abraham Joshua Heschel expressed this in his own poetry, in Text Number Three, when he wrote:
I am a trace of You in the world,
And everything is like a door.
Let us all trace that trace of You.
And through all things go to You.
I’m fond of Heschel’s sentiments because the poetry speaks of the power of the Namer. We are not just choosing a series of letters to record on a state birth certificate and on a federal social security form. We are choosing a name that will on some level shape this child’s personality…how she or he sees themselves, and how others see them too. We are choosing a name that says something about the values that each of us as parents hold dear.
There is, then, great power…power that is almost god-like, when it comes to the opportunity to name another living being. As parents we are, in this sense, partners with God when we engage in the sacred act of bestowing names upon our children.
When Heschel writes “I am a trace of You” I think what he is saying is that every parent is a Trace of God. God participates in the creation and naming of every child by way of us. When we make ourselves present, and when we name…when we give thought to this child’s future personality, and the values we hope this baby will hold dear…so does God.
We all know, of course, that our influence on our children’s personalities is limited. That’s true in terms of our everyday parenting, and it’s true with regards to the long-term impact of the names we choose for our offspring. The powerful thing about living is that we each have the ability to make a name for ourselves…to create a reputation that has nothing to do with the name that our parents chose for us.
The late Israeli poet Zelda evoked this famously when she wrote these words, in Text Number Four:
Everyone has a name
given to him by God
and given to him by his parents
Everyone has a name
given to him by his stature
and the way he smiles
and given to him by his clothing
Everyone has a name
given to him by the mountains
and given to him by the walls
Everyone has a name
given to him by the stars
and given to him by his neighbors
Everyone has a name
given to him by his sins
and given to him by his longing
Everyone has a name
given to him by his enemies
and given to him by his love
Everyone has a name
given to him by his holidays
and given to him by his work
Everyone has a name
given to him by the seasons
and given to him by his blindness
Everyone has a name
given to him by the sea and
given to him by his death.
At the end of the day, the names that we give to our children give shape to their early years….to the formative experiences that they have that will put them on the road to the rest of their lives, and all of the opportunities that Life will have, and that they will have, to name themselves.
There is something fascinating to me about names….in the sense that they mark the confluence between our pasts and our futures. Our names are associated with the past, in the sense that…for those of us who invoke the Ashkenazi or Eastern European Jewish tradition, we often name our children in memory of those who came before us and have already passed on.
But our names are also associated with the future. Because, if we agree with Zelda’s assessment that so much of our names are derived from our reputations, from the choices we make, and the experiences we have…then we are creating a name for ourselves which will potentially be invoked by the next generation or two in the future. That is to say…the choices that each of us make in our lives today will dictate, to at least a certain degree, whether our names live on after us: whether our loved one’s will choose to honor our memory by striving to adopt the values that were dear to us. And our own choices will influence whether our loved ones who live on will decide to name their children…after us.
Elie Wiesel speaks beautifully of this continuity when he writes, in Text Number Five:
In Jewish history, a name has its own history and its own memory. It connects beings with their origins. To retrace its path is then to embark on an adventure in which the destiny of a single word becomes one with that of a community; it is to undertake a passionate and enriching quest for all those who may live in your name.
“The destiny of a single word…” such a beautiful turn of phrase, and such a compelling allusion to the role that naming has in our Creation Story.
On this Rosh HaShanah, at a moment in our country’s history when our neighbors are comfortable naming their children Messiah and Hitler, let us foster a sense of humility and understanding that the choices we make for our children in this department most certainly do matter. They may not explicitly spell out what our children’s destinies will be. But they do set our kids, as we ourselves were set by our parents and grandparents, on the path toward the people they, and we, are fated to become.
Shanah Tovah.
Selected Bibliography:
“Naming Adam Naming Creation” by Professor James Hatley at http://bit.ly/1a5vfR6
“The Power of Names and Naming” by Rabbi Bruce Kadden at http://bit.ly/17NMHDy
“Can You Name Your Baby Messiah?” by Dahlia Lithwick at http://slate.me/16JbZUh
