here are the notes from the d'var torah i gave at hadar brooklyn [i figured instead of bitching about this community i should do something to try and shape it how i'd like to see it be]. i'm posting it because as you can see it relates to the importance of naming things. a friend of a good friend (who i never met) was killed in a hit and run last weekend. i found out from an email she sent me that started out: i don't know if you've heard about hannah engle, the girl who was killed in a hit-and-run this past weekend, but she was a very good friend of mine -- part of my junior year/upper west side crowd.
.....right off the bat her name-which of course made me think of why we hear the names of victims of crimes and which crimes we hear about the names of and which we don't and why when its one person involved we are more likely to hear the name than at other times. so i'll post my _notes_ (i spoke a bit off the cuff) to give a little more food for thought:
You are a perfect sarra, of course your name is rebbecca, jenn fits you perfectly, but I really love that sarah calls you juniper.
In high school Reading the illad we had to name to epic coneventions of each chapter and naming always came up. Long lists of names. In the torah we have these long lists of names. They often serve as markers of the passage of time.
This week’s parsha begins: "And these are the names of the children of Israel who came down to Egypt with Yaakov, each person with his household came."
Why put a name to the extra’s in our story who serve to mark generations and expansions of families?
What’s in a name? Isn’t this a classic and also trivial question?
in my 3rd grade classroom we teach the value of naming things that increase out social knowledge-giving a common language so that everyone talks about the same things in the same way. in studying poetry we look at the conventions that children notice and then give them a vocabulary for them. lines repeating does not happen just in the poem that we are reading it is a poetic convention that writers use.
And we also teach to name things that affect us personally. when some is being called a name we teach them that their response to the person will have more power if they name the activity and say stop teasing me i don't appreciate that.
why does giving something a name make it more powerful, give the idea ownership to someone and also take a single experience and help to create a universal narrative?
we all have a name and possibly, several nicknames. they are taken seriously given to us at different times for different reasons. my friends as we start to have children think about the first name but also the family and how will that be delineated, how will we be a group. who is leaving who's house to create a new family, should a new name be formed. and what about the end of a generation, i wish my kids to have my last name because i feel like the linage i know will then not end with me. but what if my partner is also an only child? Trying to make meaning and in the end the choice will be arbitrary but for me it solves a problem and is something I connect to.
g-d gives us the names to call him.
This shall be my name forever. This my appellation for all eternity.
Hard to translate ehyeh asher ehyeh I shall be what I shall be or I am that I am
Plaut says that this is not supposed to be for everyone, but to answer moses’ question and that a true experience of g-d will be a very personal affair and god will be what god will be to each person. Think about all the different names of god. What are some? What do they mean?
Several years ago I was in a class where came up with our own names for god. I remember learning about the omnipresence of god when I was in elementary school and how I thought it was magical that meant that god was in all the forgotten about spaces that are otherwise only occupied by air. I had no problems coming up with my personal name for god-the space occupying the air underneath the table.
Names are arbitrary but powerful and their relevance and meaning comes from a personal connection. What do I need what is this giving to me? Think of 1000 points of light from the first bush-each of the points was a person with a story and a face and a name. They all exemplified programs or ideas in the country that he wanted to highlight. But would we have cared if he had just enumerated them in the list. Giving face with a name to each program showed the individual lives, that could be like us that were affected.
Do we know the names of anyone killed in darfur, would we act if the names of those being killed were intimate to us.
Riding the subway we are often interrupted and asked for money, I’m not asking you to think about if you give or not, but can you picture and describe anyone. I could draw a picture of sonny paine often seen on the F train. Is that I see him more often, or that each time he enters my car he states his name, proclaiming something of personal importance and showing the world who he is. I bet there are others that I come across as frequently but they don’t tell me their names to remember.
To give something or someone a name gives them a place in time and space. It legitimizes them and gives them an identity, but those names can also be changed.
Pharaoh first to call us b’nai yisrael a nation a name we will have for a long time
So yes romeo from that classic quip, you would still be the same person, but you would not be noticed by others or recorded in our history.
