Occasionally, after a waiter comes to our table and says, “Hi. My name is Joe and I’ll be serving you tonight,” I respond and give him my name. My family cringes. But actually, that’s the only time we exchange names. We all know that the waiter is not interested in my name and I forget his or her name before I leave the restaurant. In most of our daily transactions, it is our credit card number or our password that is important, not our name.
But in our tradition, names are very important. When we refer to God, we often use the term Hashem, the Name, rather than debase the four letter name of God – YHVH- by common use. On Yom Tov, when we take the Torah from the Aron, we proclaim thirteen different names for God as part of the declaration of Divine compassion.
As the Torah details the slow descent into Egyptian slavery, names also play a role. The last parashah of Beresheet details the blessings given by Yaakov to his twelve children. All of them are listed by name. And then, the first section of the book of Shemot begins by listing by name the twelve children who went down to Egypt.
Humans build in redundancy into important systems, so that if one fails the secondary system will still operate. I once heard of a university club that was called “The Repetitiousness and Redundancy Organization and Society”. Their favorite song was “Play it Again, Sam”. Their favorite movie was: “Tora, Tora, Tora”. And their favorite literary character was Major Major Major Major.
But the Torah is not known for being repetitious. So our friend and teacher, Rashi asks: Why does the Torah begin the book of Shemot by listing the names of the twelve sons of Jacob, when it ended Beresheet by naming the same twelve children?
Rashi, who often infuses his explanations with ethical insights, states: “Although God counted the twelve sons of Jacob in their lifetimes, the Holy One counted them again after their deaths, in order to show us how precious they were.”
.אף על פי שמנאן בחייהן בשמותן, חזר ומנאן אחר מיתתן, להודיע חבתן. Rashi is saying is that if you love someone, you call them by their name. Rashi then draws upon the idea that the descendents of Israel will be like the stars. He quotes Isaiah (40.26) who says .המוציא במספר צבאם לכולם בשם יקרא. Even though there are millions of stars, God calls each one by name. To love someone means to love to call that person by name.
When President Barak Obama spoke at the memorial service in Newtown, CT. for the twenty children and six adults who were murdered in Sandy Hook Elementary School, the usually cool and detached leader became a bit verklempt. After calling on Americans to find ways to put an end to this type of violence, he read out the name of the children one by one: Grace, Anne Marie, Emily, Jack, Noah, Caroline, Jessica, Avielle, Lauren, Mary, Victoria, Benjamin, Charlotte, Daniel, Olivia, Josephine, Madeline, James, and Allison. These children were not just numbers. They had names and souls. Real children, six and seven years old, murdered.
I thought of the words of the poet Zelda: לכל איש יש שם.
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.
~(translated by Marcia Falk)
Numbers are abstract. Names are individual. In two weeks, as we mark the 65th anniversary of the birth of the State of Israel, we shall host the community Yom Hazikaron Service for those who sacrificed their lives for this contemporary miracle. We remember by personalizing the event.
As we mark seventy years after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Yad Vashem is still trying to gather the names of all those who were killed in the Shoah. Yad Vashem got its name from a promise found in the book of Isaiah: those who serve the Eternal with devotion will never be lost. They will have a name and a place (yad vashem) in the House of the Eternal; a name that will not be forgotten. Yad Vashem strives to make sure that every single name is somehow preserved, and recorded, and remembered, so that it will not be lost.
I have gone to the hall of records there to look up the name of a relative who was murdered by the Nazis. When I find the name, I feel a certain measure of comfort. The person is not completely gone. The name is still here. The name will always be preserved. And that means something. When I don’t find the name, I try to fill out a daf ed, a page of witness, attesting to the name and what I know of the life of the person. I have duplicated a page of witness for you to add, perhaps, one person to the names that Yad Vashem has on file. לכל איש יש שם. Each of us has a name.
Years ago, I organized a project that engaged an entire community and became a model for others. We requested names from Yad Vashem and Bnai Brith Hillel and asked people to add the names of their family members who were murdered. On the night and day of Yom Hashoah, for twenty-four hours, standing alone in a chapel, we recited the names of tens of thousands of people who were killed. Everyone has a name. People came from all over to read names for twenty minutes. The experience touched the souls, the neshamot of everyone who participated. I’d like Beth Tzedec and Toronto congregations to consider doing this in conjunction with Hillel in the years to come . לכל איש יש שם. Each of us has a name.
We sometimes question whether to continue our Shabbat tradition of reciting the names of individuals for whom yahrzeit will be observed in the week to come. It extends the service a bit. It could be printed. Not everyone comes to say kaddish. Who really remembers? Rabbi Larry Hoffman taught me that each name resonates for someone. It is a statement about the history of the congregation. And when we accidentally miss a name, the complaints that I receive are indicative of the significance of hearing a name recited out loud.
לכל איש יש שם. Each of us has a name.
My friend, Rabbi Jack Riemer, who suggested the theme of this sermon, asks “What is the most moving part of the Yizkor service?” He thinks it is not my derashah, although many of you and my colleagues tell me that it is meaningful. Nor, he suggests, is it when the Hazzan chants the El Maley Rahamim, even though he does it with a pathos and passion that touches so many souls.
Rabbi Riemer thinks that the most moving moment in the Yizkor service is when we recite the individual Yizkor prayers, and say the names of those whom we have come to remember. When their names cross our lips, “their faces and their stories, their good deeds and their foibles, their faults and their virtues, and their love for us come welling up into our hearts, and we feel close to them once again. It is the recitation of their names—whether in Hebrew or in English—it is the recitation of their names that is the most moving moment in the service.” It is for me. Is it also for you?
And so, in addition to filling in a page of witness, I make two other requests today. Learn the names of the people who sit near to you in shul. You usually sit near the same people. Names give identities to the faces you already recognize.
Teach your children and grandchildren, your nieces and nephews, the Hebrew names of your family members. Make a list. Preserve the names with sanctity. Learn who you were named for. Learn your own Hebrew name and the name of your mother and father, for that is who you are in our eyes, and in the eyes of God.
לכל איש יש שם. Each of us has a name. Every person has a name. And that name reflects a whole world. It tells you who you are and where you come from. For many of us, the name conveys memories of a role model, whether in the Bible or in our family’s history, that those who named us hoped we would live
up to.
Yehuda Amichai offered these words:
My father was a god and did not know it.He gave me
The Ten Commandments neither in thunder nor in fury; neither in fire nor in cloud
But rather in gentleness and love.And he added caresses and kind words
And he added “I beg you,” and “please.”
And he sang “keep” and “remember” the Shabbat
In a single melody and he pleaded and
cried quietly between one utterance and the next,
“Do not take the name of God in vain,” do not take it, not in vain,
I beg you,” do not bear false witness against your neighbor.”
And he hugged me tightly and whispered in my ear
“Do not steal.Do not commit adultery. Do not murder.”
And he put the palms of his open hands
On my head with the Yom Kippur blessing.
“Honor, love, in order that your days might be long
On the earth.” And my father’s voice was white like the hair on his head.
Later on he turned his face to me one last time
Like on the day when he died in my arms and said,
I want to add Two to the Ten Commandments:
The eleventh commandment – “You shall not change.”
And the twelfth commandment – “You must surely change.”
So said my father and then he turned from me and walked off
Disappearing into his strange distances.
Each of us has a name. Although we sometimes look away so as not to see the homeless, street people, we have learned through our work with Out of the Cold that she is a mother’s child, and should be treated with dignity. That is why God repeated the names of the children of Israel. Because each of them was precious. Each was unique. Each was loved.
לכל איש יש שם. Each of us has a name. As we strive to live up to the name we were given, let us think of the hopes and dreams that went into choosing that name. At the end of our days, when it comes time for
us to leave this world, may it be said of us, not only that we left behind a financial legacy, but may it be said of us, above all, that we left behind a moral legacy, the finest that anyone can ever bequeath. May it be said of us that we left behind a shem tov, a good name.
לכל איש יש שם
