What's in a Name?: Lech L'cha 5770

The stage is set. Act 2 Scene 2 of the most famous play in the history of Western literature. A love-struck Romeo hides in the shadow-laden orchard of the Capulet’s waiting for a glimpse of his newly-found love Juliet. Juliet, herself smitten by her first encounter with the young and handsome Romeo, walks as though in a daze, gently pacing the cold, stone balcony adjoining her room.

As she steps into the light, Romeo is taken aback

“But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.”

Juliet, unaware of his presence, begins to speak aloud, lamenting the unfortunate reality that Romeo is a Montague, the sworn-enemy of her father.

“O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name;
'Tis but thy name that is my enemy.”



“What's Montague?” She asks,
It is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face. O, be some other name
Belonging to a man.
What's in a name? That which we call a rose,
By any other word would smell as sweet.
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo called.”

She’s got a good point there you know. What is in a name? After all, isn’t a name only a moniker, a label, an arbitrarily chosen word which eventually becomes eternally attached to the thing it means to label? Shouldn’t the very essence of the thing itself be what is most important? In the end, a name is really just a garment, covering that which truly matters.

But wait a minute, I remember the rest of the play, and it doesn’t turn out so good. In the end, despite their love for one another, Romeo and Juliet simply cannot seem to escape the destiny of their names, Montague and Capulet, and ultimately this is what makes the play’s final lines so tragic: “For never was a story of more woe, Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”

Yes, the truth is that names do matter. A rose by any other name simply would not smell as sweet. “Honey, happy anniversary, I bought you a dozen ‘Road Kills’!” It just doesn’t work, does it?

Yes, names do matter; and our own names perhaps matter the most. The fact is that our names help to shape who we are and how we relate to our world. Allow me to tell you two quick stories which will help to explain what I mean. The first is about a young girl whose parents chose to name her a particularly ‘Jewish’ sounding name. It is a beautiful Hebrew name, one which hearkens back to a female Biblical figure of great strength and beauty; it is a good, Jewish name. Unfortunately, this young girl lived in a town without many Jews, and so the result was people were constantly mispronouncing her name. Her earliest years were filled with memories of teachers, friends and neighbors constantly butchering her beautiful name. Finally she had it. She came home one day and said to her parents, “that’s it, from now on I want you to call me Christina!” It’s a funny story, one that her family now looks back on with fondness. But the experience of living her life with a unique, and decidedly ethnic name became the foundation for her college entrance essays; that’s what’s in a name!

The second is about the Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, Chancellor Arnold Eisen. Growing up in Philadelphia, everyone knew him as ‘Arnie.” But, when his doctoral studies brought him to The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, many knew him by his Hebrew name “Hanan.” He once told an interesting anecdote about a profound moment in his life, the moment when he had to decide, was he an Arnie, or was he a Hanan? Even though he knew that his personal essence would be the same regardless of whether he was known by one name or the other, nonetheless, he questioned the subtle differences. Arnie, was from Philadelphia, was an American-Jew and had his own set of personal priorities which may in fact have differed slightly from those of Hanan, who was an Israeli student, speaking and thinking in Hebrew, living in Jerusalem. That’s what’s in a name!

These two stories help to show us that our names deeply matter to us. They help to shape us as individuals and it is not a stretch to imagine that our lives could in fact be drastically different had we been named Christina, or Hanan instead.

This brings me to this morning’s parasha, Lech Lecha: the narrative starting line for the stories of our Patriarch Abraham and his wife Sarah. But at the beginning of our parasha, they are each called by a different name. Avram and Sarai are just a boy and girl from the Old Country of Haran in Upper-Mesopotamia, far from their destiny in the Land of Canaan. But this morning we read the seminal moment when their names and therefore their destinies were forever changed.

Just like in the covenantal scene found in Chapter 15, known as Brit Bein Ha’itarim, here in Chapter 17, God again offers a covenant to our forefather Abram, but this time, the covenant includes a name change. God says:
וְלֹֽא-יִקָּרֵא עוֹד אֶת-שִׁמְךָ אַבְרָם, וְהָיָה שִׁמְךָ אַבְרָהָם, כִּי אַב-הֲמוֹן גּוֹיִם נְתַתִּֽיךָ:
“And you shall no longer be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I make you the father of a multitude of nations.”

Just a few verses later, God extends the dramatic name change to our foremother Sarai as well:
וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים אֶל-אַבְרָהָם שָׂרַי אִשְׁתְּךָ לֹֽא-תִקְרָא אֶת-שְׁמָהּ שָׂרָי, כִּי שָׂרָה שְׁמָֽהּ:
“And God said to Abraham, ‘As for your wife Sarai, you shall not call her Sarai, but her name shall be Sarah.’”

I know, at first glance, it doesn’t seem like such a big deal. Sure there names were changed, but only slightly, in actuality, it wasn’t as much of a name change as a ‘name adjustment.’ Avram, gets an extra ‘hey’, becoming Avraham, and Sarai, also gets an ‘hey’ becoming Sarah. What’s in a name, you may ask, surely an Avram by any other name would smell as sweet? So what’s the big deal about a little ‘hey’?

Well there are a few traditional answers offered by the Biblical commentators. Firstly, Rashi explains that what we have here is not merely the case of a slight ‘name adjustment,’ in fact with the addition of a simple ‘hey,’ their very essences were changed forever. Rashi, [15:5] writes: “Avram has no son, but Abraham does, and so too, Sarai cannot give birth, but Sarah can, therefore God is saying to them, by calling you a new name, I am giving you a new destiny.” This comment reflects a later concept popularized by the Rambam, Maimonides who explains that the process of T’shuvah, of repentance involves an actual or a metaphorical name change, a declaration that I am no longer the person who did that egregious thing; I am not the same individual who committed that sin. By changing our names, we may indeed change our very essence.

But a question we still need to answer is not the colloquial query ‘what the hey?’ but instead we must ask ‘why the ‘hey’’? The most commonly heard answer is that the ‘hey’ that is added to the names of Avram and Sarai, is a piece of the Divine name, yud, hey, vav, hey, the Tetragrammaton, the mysterious four-letter name for God. By enacting this name change, God is giving a piece of the Divine spirit to our foreparents Abraham and Sarah. For the rest of their lives, through the trials of Sodom and Gomorrah and the Akedah, the Binding of Isaac, they bare the weight and perhaps the burden of the Divine Name.

Another explanation comes from the Hasidic master the Degel Machaneh Ephraim, who quotes the Zohar as saying that they ‘hey’ that is given to Abraham and Sarah is representative of the number five, its designation in Gematriah. Therefore the ‘hey’ stands for the Hamisha Humshei Torah, the Five Books of Moses. Thus by mandating a name change, God is essentially rewarding Abraham and Sarah with the legacy of Torah, the lifeblood of the Jewish people. With the addition of a simple ‘hey’ they cease to be the Mesopotamian wanderers they once were, and instead they transform into the teachers of the entire Jewish people for thousands of years. Hence our desire to bless ourselves by their holy names; our God is Magen Avraham u’Foked Sarah, the Shield of Abraham and the Guardian of Sarah.

Finally, I want to conclude this morning with one final thought about the power of names. Ultimately, whether your name is Christina or Hanan; Avram or Sarai, Joel or Yosef, our tradition tells us that there is a power to our names which is truly exponential: The Keter Shem Tov, the power of a good name. In the 4th chapter of Pirkei Avot it reads:
רבי שמעון אומר שלשה כתרים הם.
Rabi Shimon says: There are three crowns that one can wear:

כתר תורה, וכתר כהונה, וכתר מלכות. וכתר שם טוב עולה על גביהן:

The crown of Torah, the crown of the Priesthood and the crown of the Kingship; but the crown of a Shem Tov, a good name, is above all of them!

So friends, let us go out and try to bring the incredible honor of a tiny ‘hey’ to our own names: we do so by living our lives with God’s holy name on our tongues, by constantly learning and teaching the lessons of God’s glorious Torah, and by solidifying our ultimate legacy to our family and our community: the crown of a good name. Shabbat Shalom.