WHAT’S IN A NAME?
What’s in a name? ‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet’. Shakespeare was right, of course – but names are very powerful – and the act of naming is very powerful: In the second account of Creation (Genesis chapter 2), when the lone human being is looking for a mate, the Eternal One creates the animals and brings them to the human being to name them; but in the act of naming, the human being exerts power over each creature, and so, each, in turn, is rendered inappropriate to be a companion (2:18-20).
To name is to exert power – and to withhold a name is also to exert power. When Moses is apprehended in the wilderness by a bush alive with flames and a commanding voice (Exodus chapter 3), he feels that in order to go back to Egypt and summon the slaves, he must be able to tell them who sent him. But the answer he receives does not help him: Ehyeh asher Ehyeh (3:14a) – which translates as both, ‘I am that I am’ and ‘I will be what I will be’: ‘Thus shall you say to the Israelites, “I am” has sent me to you’ (14b). The Eternal One cannot be captured in a name – and this is conveyed in the Hebrew, both, by the meaning, and by the sound of the Hebrew word for ‘I am/I will be’: Ehyeh; as Gabriel Josipovici writes (‘The Book of God’, 1988, p.74), almost completely non-consonantal, ehyeh is the closest a word can get to pure breath.
In the TaNaKh – the Hebrew Bible – names often convey something about the character of the person: Jacob – Ya’akov – for example, is a ‘heel’ – eikev – because he grabs his brother Esau’s heel as they are being born (Genesis 19:26); later, he becomes Israel – Yisrael: ‘One who struggles with God’ (Genesis 32:29). Names also act as signals. And so, in the Book of Esther, read at Purim, the heroine is introduced, first, by her Hebrew name; then by her Persian name: ‘And he [Mordechai] brought up Hadassah, that is Esther’ (2:7a); in this way, the reader learns, both, the significance of her Jewishness, and the fact that being Jewish is marginal in that society. When it comes to the chief villain, Haman, the text signals to the reader that Haman is the enemy of the Jews, before he says or does anything, by presenting a brief genealogy: ‘After these things the King Achashveirosh promoted Haman the son of Hammedata, the Agagite’ (3:1a). After Haman delivers his infamous invective against the Jews, urging the King to destroy them, this genealogy is repeated: ‘Then the King took his ring from his hand, and gave it to Haman, the son of Hammedata, the Agagite, the Jews’ enemy’ (3:10). The signal is flashing red: Agag was a descendant of Amalek (I Samuel 15:7-9), who attacked the stragglers from the rear during the Exodus from Egypt (Exodus 17:8-9), and so came to be regarded as the arch-enemy of the Jewish people (Deuteronomy 25:17-19).
What’s in a name? (Almost) everything… Purim Samei’ach! Happy Purim!
Rabbi Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah