What’s in a Name?

Va-era 5776 / 9 January 2016

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,

It isn’t just one of your holiday games;

You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter

When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.

— T.S. Eliot, “The Naming of Cats”

There is a healthy dose of humor in T.S. Eliot’s poem, “The Naming of Cats,” but it also contains an elemental truth of human experience: weall carry different names, different versions of ourselves, through life. Stories of split identities, and the turmoil they create, captivate us: Darth Vader and the other villains of the Star Wars movies must take on new names when they move to the Dark Side; Clark Kent, despite his best efforts, can’t get a date with Lois Lane because she’s in love with Superman; and the comedy in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream depends on the shifting tides of the lovers’ mistaken identities. In the Torah, Avram becomes Avraham, Ya’akov turns into Yisrael, Yosef hides from his brothers behind an Egyptian mask, Moses grows up a prince only to discover his true origin lies elsewhere.

As this morning’s parshah opens, we see that God, too, goes by multiple names: “I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shaddai, but I did not make Myself known to them by My name י.ה.ו.ה.”^[1] God seems to tell Moses that until this point the Patriarchs had known God by a certain name — “El Shaddai” — but from now forward Moses and the Israelites would know God through the four-letter name י.ה.ו.ה. A survey of Divine names in the Bible appears to support this interpretation: from this point forward, the name El Shaddai appears only in Biblical poetry, which reflects ancient speech and language patterns — not in the narrative portions.^[2] The name “El Shaddai,” then, reflects a very ancient name for God, phased out early in the Exodus period in favor of the more common י.ה.ו.ה and “Elohim.”

So far so good — except that we can’t take God’s statement, “I did not make Myself known to them by My name י.ה.ו.ה,”^[3] at face value. As nearly every commentator on the Torah points out, the Patriarchs evidentlydid know the name י.ה.ו.ה. If you took the time this morning to review the selections from Genesis I suggested,^[4] you already saw this for yourself; but it’s worth citing a few examples. On Avram’s initial survey of the Land of Israel, the Torah tells us, “he built there an altar to י.ה.ו.ה and invoked י.ה.ו.ה by name.”^[5] In their first formal covenant, God tells Avram directly, “I am י.ה.ו.ה who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans.”^[6] Abraham and his servant Eliezer use the name י.ה.ו.ה eleven times in the course of their search for Isaac’s wife,^[7] and Isaac and Rebecca invoke the name in blessing their sons.^[8] As Jacob dreams of his ladder, God tells him, “I am י.ה.ו.ה, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac.”^[9] Moreover, logic dictates that all the Israelites must have known this name. Moses’ promise of freedom would have credibility only if it comes from a God already known to the Israelites; what use is a promise from someone you’ve never heard of?^[10] 

How, then, do we understand God’s claim that “I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shaddai, but I did not make Myself known to them by My name י.ה.ו.ה?”^[11] The 15th-century Spanish rabbi and philosopher Yitzhak Arama solves the problem by distinguishing between a person’s essential and functional names. Our personal names incorporate all the different facets of our identity: trades, hobbies, relationships; while our functional names capture only part of who we are. When you address me as “Rabbi Abe,” “Rabbi” becomes my primary role; when my children call me “Abba,” I am defined by fatherhood; but to call me “Abe Friedman” necessarily brings with it all of the roles I play: father, son, husband, rabbi, Philadelphia resident, musician, and so on.^[12] When God tells Moses, “I am י.ה.ו.ה,” God uses the name that subsumes all of God’s other names and qualities and evokes God’s true essence;^[13] and our parshah becomes the turning point at which we, along with the Israelites, shift to a new understanding of God.

A popular midrashic tradition associates “El Shaddai” with God as Creator;^[14] but in this limited form one could easily imagine God as a kind of Deist clockmaker, setting the world in motion and then stepping away.^[15] This idea of God helps us make sense of a surprising comment by Ibn Ezra, the great Spanish rabbi: While Pharaoh rigidly refuses to listen to י.ה.ו.ה,^[16] Ibn Ezra argues that Pharaoh has no problem acknowledging the existence of Elohim, the transcendent and detached Creator. Pharaoh only rejects the authority of י.ה.ו.ה, the ever-present, ever-engaged God of Israel.^[17] 

This becomes the defining conflict of the Exodus story. Pharaoh can accept a distant, disconnected God who created the universe and then stepped back, leaving humans to their own devices. But the name י.ה.ו.ה, as we saw in last week’s parshah,^[18] speaks to God’s eternal existence and engagement in our lives.^[19] The Exodus directly challenges the notion of a detached, uninvolved God. Our God reaches into history to save the oppressed from their tormentors. A distant Creator can enact laws of nature, but the mitzvot can only come from a God who takes an interest in our lives, collectively and individually. Moreover, mitzvot can’t be recevied by an oppressed and abandoned people, slaves in mind as much as in body, but only by a free nation that recognizes God’s interest in them and responds by taking responsibility for their own lives. This is why the Revelation must take place at Sinai, after the Exodus, and not in the first encounter with God in Egypt.

As we — the readers — return to this story again, it offers us the opportunity to find ourselves in the narrative, alongside our ancestors. Each day presents us, too, with the opportunity to experience God’s engagement in our lives. Our growing sense of God’s presence calls us to action and accountability, to liberate our spirit. Parashat Va-era invites us to enter a relationship with י.ה.ו.ה, the involved, connected, all-encompassing manifestation of Divinity in the world. That relationship, ultimately, is the fullest expression of redemption.

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Tags: Deism, Exodus, Va-era