Shabbat Parashat Lech Lecha

October 19, 2002 - 13 Heshvan 5763

To Call Upon God By Name

Today's Torah
By: Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson
from the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies

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Torah Reading: Genesis 12:1 - 17:27

Haftarah Reading: Isaiah 40:27 - 41:16

 

One of the striking facts about religious faith around the world is the array of ways in which human beings conceive of, and worship, the Divine. The sacred claims a myriad of names -- Ahura Mazda, Brahma, Nirvana, Takan Wanka, Osiris, Zeus, Jupiter, Wodan, and many, many more. Given how many names the Divine is called, it is particularly striking that the Jewish conception of God doesn't really have a name at all. Or, at the very least, our God's name is suspiciously like no name.

 

Our two daughter religions, Christianity and Islam, have inherited this funny quirk as well -- a supreme God who lacks a name. After all, Christianity calls God "God the Father." But "God" isn't a name; it's a job description, a title.

 

In Christianity, their "God the Son" may have a name, but God the father doesn't. Similarly, in Islam, the appellation, "Allah," is comparable to the Hebrew name, "El." "El" means "god" but it isn't a name -- again, it's a title.

 

All of this springs from the interesting history of the God of the Torah and of God's name. Our portion mentions that Abraham "built an altar to the Lord and invoked the Lord by name." What does it mean to invoke a nameless God by name? Ramban (Spain and Israel, 13th Century), building on the explanation found in the ancient midrash Beresheet Rabbah, explains that this phrase means that Abraham established God's service in new lands and proclaimed God's identity and oneness to people who had never encountered that idea before.

 

To name something is to reveal something about its essence, to exert a kind of control, to assert a comprehension of its nature, its limits and its potentials. Certainly, when the Torah says that Abraham called on God by name, it means to tell us that Abraham enjoyed an intimacy with God that others of his generation did not. It teaches that Abraham knew God with a thoroughness that no one before him could equal.

 

And yet, the name that Abraham knew sounds suspiciously like no name at all. The name consists of four Hebrew letters: Y-H-V-H. Lacking vowels (or hard consonants, for that matter) it is virtually impossible to articulate. It sounds like a breath -- air passing in and out of the lungs. Perhaps it tells us that God is the breath of the universe. Grammatically, the name is a mixture of the verb "to be" in three different tenses: Y-H-Y-H (was), H-V-H (is), and E-H-Y-H (will be). The funny combination of all three in one asserts that God transcends time, categorization and limit. God is eternal, and radically different than anyone (anything?) else to which we relate in life.

 

When Moses asks God to reveal the divine name, God refuses, asserting that no one can see God's face and live. But God also leaves Moses with the bizarre, "WAS-IS-WILL BE" and tells Moses to transmit that "name" to the Jewish People.

 

And the history of that "name" reveals that the Jews understood to treat that awkward word with reverence -- that it was unlike any other name in the world. Its articulation was restricted to the holiest day of the year, Yom Kippur, by the holiest person in biblical Judaism, the Kohen Gadol (High Priest), in the holiest place in the world, the Holy of Holies in the Temple in Jerusalem.

 

Since the destruction of the Temple some two thousand years ago, no observant Jew has pronounced that "name," the ineffable sign of our unique God. To say that God is ultimately unnamable is to assert that God is beyond knowing in any comprehensive, ultimate way -- the distinction between atheist and theist are not as clear as either party would want to claim.

 

Without actually being God, we cannot fully know God; we can, however, embody Godly traits and cultivate God's loving presence. There is all the difference in the world between knowing God and relating to God -- all the difference between explaining and being. And God, if anything, is the Source and the power of being.

 

Shabbat Shalom.

 

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Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson is the Dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic
Studies at the University of Judaism, a rabbinical school for the heart,
mind and soul.
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