What Names Can Mean

Last night was the monthly lay-led service, and once again I was asked to give the d'var Torah.  I also baked a loaf of bread for us to share at the end:

Yeasted pumpkin bread made with roasted butternut squash and a milk glaze.

Trying to come up with something to say, my focus was captured by the title of this week's passage, which is also the way Jews refer to the book of Exodus - by its Hebrew name "Sh'mot", not the Greek word which attached to it much later, as Christians and others translated and adapted the Pentateuch.  This is what I said, with a few changes on the fly that may not be captured here:

We know that parashot are called by their (usually) first word.  This week’s parasha is Sh’mot – the word means “Names”.  It starts by listing the names of Joseph’s brothers who traveled to Egypt.  It gives other names as well, including – as Rabbi Fuchs is fond of listing – those of the many women without whom Moses would not have survived, from Shiprah and Puah, the midwives, to his sister Miriam, his wife Zipporah, and so on.  You can read and hear many d’var Torahs about “The Amazing Women of Exodus” including on the Reform Judaism website and Rabbi Fuchs’ blog.

We know that in the Torah, if somebody has a name, it is because they are important.  There is something significant about that person.  Persons without names are not important for who they are, but for what they do, as when Pharaoh’s daughter saves Moses from the river, or when Pharaoh himself responds to Moses and Aaron by making life harder for the Israelite slaves.

G-d asked Adam to give the animals names, and in other places it is G-d who gives people new names at key points in their lives: Abram becomes Abraham, Sarai becomes Sarah, Jacob becomes Israel.  Sometimes we hear that a name has an especial meaning, as when in this parasha Moses names his son Gershom, “for, he said, ‘I have been a stranger in a foreign land.’” (Exodus 1:22)   And G-d also takes a name in this week’s parasha; at 3:15 we read:

And G-d said further to Moses, “This shall you speak to the Israelites: The Eternal, the God of your ancestors – the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob – has sent me to you:

This shall be My name forever,

This My appellation for all eternity.

The writers of the Torah are not the only persons who focus on names.  William Shakespeare’s famous lines include “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet” from Romeo and Juliet in addition to her lament “wherefor are thou Romeo?”, which modern people think means “where are you?” because she cannot see him under balcony.  However, in the language of Shakespeare’s time Juliet is complaining because his name makes him unsuitable as a lover – if he were not Romeo, and a Montague, her family would approve.

Royalty often take a regnant name, different from the one by which they were previously known.  The House of Windsor had been the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha until the first World War made a German name unpopular.  Performers often change their names, either by choice or by requirement; in the registry of actors, if somebody already uses a name the next person has to use something else, which is why there are initials and people known by their middle name.  Truck drivers have handles, and so do people on social media.  Westley became the Dread Pirate Roberts, and later offers the name to Inigo Montoya, whose well-known introduction has become a classic example used and meme’d by thousands.

Names can tell something about you: where you are from, who your parents are, your religion, your culture, what or who was in the news when you were born.  You may have a familynickname, a social nickname, a work name.  Some cultures believe your one true name has so much power that nobody can know what it is, and people use different names in different situations which conceal it.  Some people change their name as a way of marking a passage: marriage, divorce, professional achievement.  Children going to college often choose a new nickname or other appellation, to memorialize their stepping out of childhood and the family into their adult being.

Some names are evocative; say them and an image, a personality, instantly spring to mind.  Maybe you have an impression of the person and what she or he did in their lives.  Think of Hartford’s Katherine Hepburn and you get an impression of a tall, thin, independent woman, with a certain vocal tone and mannerisms.  Mark Twain – a pseudonym used by Hartford’s Samuel Clemens – may bring up a man in a white suit, or a mischievous boy talking others into painting a fence.

Think also of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whose birthday we celebrate on Monday, and in whose name a national Day of Service was instituted.  What do you think of when you hear Dr. King’s name?  Many white people in the places he walked thought and referred to him negatively (I won’t use the words they called him and others in the civil rights movement).  Black people – who were called “Negro” at the time, another example of a name and how it changes over time – thought him a leader, savior, a beacon for persons who sought and fought to overcome discrimination based upon prejudice, much as many of us in this room likely do.  Maybe you think of a loving husband to his wife Coretta – this is the image that inspired a new sculpture on the Boston Common, which shows their hands and arms in an embrace, “a representation of vulnerability and security” according to the executive director of the group that oversaw its creation and installation this week.

When you hear the name of Dr. King, or of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, whose birthday was earlier this week and who walked beside Dr.King and other Civil Rights leaders in many marches, what do you think?  Do you want to step up to their example and try to change the world?  Do you want to help people in your community?

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel presenting the Judaism and World Peace Award
to Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Dec. 7, 1965 (Wikimedia Commons)

Think of the future, when you will be but a name in people’s memories, and remember Iago’s remonstration in Shakespeare’s Othello that “Who steals my purse steals trash / 'tis something, nothing / 'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands / But he that filches from me my good name / Robs me of that which not enriches him / And makes me poor indeed”.  How will you want them to remember you?  Do you want to be but a type, somebody who took action, nameless otherwise?  Or do you hope that somebody will hear your name, and like the others, a face, a voice, an example spring to mind for others to follow?

Your name can be your legacy.  How will you be remembered?

{NB:  I deleted the information about our community Day of Service on the following Sunday, as that is irrelevant to most of my readers and will be out of date soon after this posts.}