Each of us has a name
given by God
and given by our parents
Each of us has a name
given by our stature and our smile
and given by what we wear
Each of us has a name
given by the mountains
and given by our walls
Each of us has a name
given by the stars
and given by our neighbours
Each of us has a name
given by our sins
and given by our longing
Each of us has a name
given by our enemies
and given by our love
Each of us has a name
given by our celebrations
and given by our work
Each of us has a name
given by the seasons
and given by our blindness
Each of us has a name
given by the sea
and given by
our death.
This poem was written by Zelda, an Israeli poet, born in Ukraine, and translated into English by her friend, the American Marcia Falk. Although written as recently as the 20th Century, these words have achieved iconic status. “Each of us has a name” has become part of the Jewish liturgy for funerals, stonesettings, and Holocaust Memorial Day.
It speaks to something we know: the power of names.
When Adam, the first human being, named the animals, he gave life to their souls.
Knowing somebody’s name tells you about them. We hear a name and, in it, hear language, history, culture, connection.
You know, when you hear your own name, the power it holds. Your full name. Your government name. Your nickname. A secret name only someone you love deeply ever calls you. In hearing your name, you know your relationship to the one who says it.
Speaking someone’s name can summon them, invite their presence; or can scold them, cast them away. When we speak a name, we exert our own power.
We give names at birth through baby blessings. We call up somebody by their Hebrew name when they come to Torah. We change names with marriages, after life-changing experiences, and as a way of affirming gender. We etch names on tombstones and recite names during El Malei Rachamim.
When we understand the power of names, we can understand the significance of the rituals of Yom Kippur.
Long before there was a synagogue in Kingston, or Jews in Europe, or an academy in Babylon, or a Temple in Jerusalem, there was a Tabernacle in Shiloh.
It was a great tented structure on a great hill north of Bethel, whose songs could be heard deep in the Jordan valley and whose burning incense could be smelt as far away as Jericho.
This fabric sanctuary had many layers. Everyone could stand around the edges. Then, past the first gate, only the true believers could enter. Then, into the inner sanctum, only the priests from the ancient tribal hierarchy would go. And then, right at the centre of the mishkan, behind many curtains, hidden away from all view, was the Holy of Holies.
Only one man could enter there: the High Priest. And he could only enter once a year: on Yom Kippur. And he could only say one word, a secret word: the name of God.
We do not know what that name was or how it was pronounced.
Even Moses did not know it. While tending Jethro’s flocks in Midian, a great burning bush appeared before Moses and demanded he return to Egypt and free the people.
Then Moses asked for God’s name. God roared in reply “ehyeh asher ehyeh”: I will be what I will be. “Tell the people that ‘I will be’ is the one who sent you.”
God did not share the name with Moses in that moment. Maybe Moses never heard it at all. Indeed, maybe Moses could not have known it, because to know someone’s name is to know their inner essence, and God’s is beyond our comprehension.
But, we are told, God did let someone in on the secret of the Name: an initiate; one in every generation: the High Priest. He is a semi-mythic figure in our Torah, who, in legend, was beholden to the secrets of the Universe. But, insofar as God’s Name was ever knowable, the High Priest knew it.
We do not know how he said the name. Perhaps he shut his eyes and whispered it into the empty space behind all the drapery. Or maybe he cocked his head back and cried it aloud up to the Heavens. We know he said it ten times.
And, by saying God’s ineffable name, some great magic happened. In this pre-rational time of mystics and miracles, God’s holy presence descended on the Israelites, and granted them all forgiveness.
Yes, a name grants connection across the veils of reality. In ancient times, to say God’s unspeakable name breached God’s innermost essence. Saying the name summoned God from behind the veil of reality. The name ruptured through the boundaries of real and spiritual; finite and eternal.
You have seen this name written down. Above our ark here are the words in Hebrew ‘ivdu et Hashem besimchah- “serve God with joy” but the word is not written as it sounds.
Scholars call it the Tetragrammaton, meaning “four letter word” because it is inscribed with four Hebrew characters. Yod-heh-vav-heh.
But these letters are unpronounceable themselves. Even with vowels added, the letters struggle to make a discernible word. Protestant Christians in Germany tried to render it as Jehovah, which we know is impossible in Hebrew.
According to the Talmud, the name the High Priest may actually have said in the Holy of Holies was forty-two letters long. The High Priest intoned it quietly under the sweet melodies of the priests so that nobody could hear it.
Legend says that perhaps this name was passed on through generations but only to those who lived a life of absolute discretion, never once got angry, never tasted alcohol, and never insisted on anything. If such people exist, they are too modest to reveal their knowledge. If they ever existed, they probably no longer do.
So we read it as “Adonai,” literally meaning “my ruler,” even though we know that is not really God’s name.
In common speech, we just call God “HaShem”: literally, the name. Baruch HaShem: thank God; b’ezrat HaShem, please God. God is the Name; the Name of all Names; the Name beyond Names.
We come to the Yizkor ceremony. In the space-time of Yom Kippur, this service of remembrance is our holy of holies. Now, we say names.
In the build-up to this ritual, members send in the names of all those they remember, so that they can be read aloud. Some names, too, remain unspoken, but rest silently on lips, or stay gently placed on grieving hearts. Here, the names of our dead are called out.
Just as when the High Priest entered the Tabernacle at Shiloh so many centuries ago, something intangible happens with the naming.
Just as Adam once named the animals and animated their spirits, we name our loved ones and breathe new life into their memories.
We breach past death and touch an essence of the person that cannot be reduced or destroyed. We rupture the boundaries of real and spiritual, and see that something of our loved one has never left us.
Through saying the names of our loved ones, we bring their presence into our lives. They bring us comfort, and the pain of their loss. They bring us forgiveness, and the opportunity to forgive. They bring us the past, and point us to the future.
David Eagleman is a neuroscientist at the University of Stanford. He wrote a small book called Sum, which imagines forty different possible afterlives. In the eighth possible ending to our time on earth, Eagleman writes:
There are three deaths. The first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.
This popular imagining of the afterlife is, in some ways, anticipated by our rituals of remembering.
Today, we say the names of our loved ones, and, if only for a moment, we give them life with us here once more. In a way we cannot explain, that is beyond reason, their names stand in for their whole being.
We know that, in our naming, and in our remembering, we keep something important of the dead with us. Just as they were once called in from playing in the street, or called up to read from Torah, or called out to in a crowded room, we call them again to come and pray with us.
May their names be remembered for a blessing.
Yizkor 5787, Kingston Liberal Synagogue
