#265: Do You Have a Jewish Name?

A D’var Torah on Parashat Bemidbar, Bemidbar/Numbers 1:1 - 4:20

A list of the names of Jews who lived in Kaifeng, China. Their names, such as Avraham ben Yisrael, also appear with Chinese transliteration.

Gimme Some Torah #265

Welcome to new subscriber Jeff!

Something funny that happened to me last night. I was talking to a technical support agent for my cable television line. That’s never funny, but at least I got thirty dollars off my bill. I was trying to figure out why our new converter box wasn’t working. The tech support guy, from the Dominican Republic, says to me, “Garfinkel. That is such a pretty name. Is it Italian or Greek?”

I told him that it’s a Jewish name. I don’t happen to my name is particularly pretty, but it’s mine and I’ll take it. I know for a fact that it’s neither Italian nor Greek. But after I hung up the phone, I realized that I had given the tech support agent inaccurate information. Garfinkel is not a real Jewish name. It’s a name that some Teutonic king or prince demanded that my family take for reasons that that escape me.

Indeed, most of our last names are not real Jewish names. We were generally given names on the lower end of the socioeconomic order as a way of marking us as untouchables. In that culture, color based names were considered to be low class. Therefore, many Jewish names are colors, like Schwartz (black), Roth (red), Green, Blau (blue), etc. Others are related to occupations such as Goldman, Silverman, or Rabinowitz.

But none of these are actual Jewish names. A real Jewish name is simply a name and a patronymic and/or a matronymic. There are lots of good examples in the Torah portion this week. Sh’lumiel ben Tzurishaddai. Pagi’el ben Okhran. Elitzur ben Sh’deiur. Those are Jewish names.

So should we change our actual civil names back? Should I go to the Somerset County Courthouse and petition to henceforth be recognized as Eli ben Avraham v’Shifra? I don’t plan on it.

You can do that if you want, and many people in Israel have Hebraized their names, meaning that they have taken their European exile names and given them a Hebrew twist. For instance, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir was born Golda Mabovitch and then married Morris Meyerson. The last name Meir is a Hebrew version of the name she had in Milwaukee.

But it is not necessary to create Hebrew versions of our names, either. The reason is found in the Bible: “A good name is more precious than fine oil.” ט֥וֹב שֵׁ֖ם מִשֶּׁ֣מֶן ט֑וֹב

What is it that makes a name good? Is a good name a mellifluous name with a pleasing sound? Is it a name that “sounds Jewish?” No. From a Jewish perspective, a good name is a name that is attached to a good person. We do credit to our names when we act with lovingkindness, and we damage our names when we act with cruelty or apathy.

We should also consider that a Jewish name in our world can belong to a non-Jew. The skier Mikayla Shiffrin, as an example, had a single Jewish paternal grandfather but no other connection to the Jewish people. The Canadian film and television director Norman Jewison is not Jewish at all and has no Jewish ancestry of any kind!

The converse is also true—a pious Jew can have a non-Jewish name because our ethnicity is passed through the maternal line. There are plenty of Jews with Irish names who live seriously Jewish lives!

In sum, the best way to make your name a Jewish name is to act in accordance with Jewish values. If you do that, it doesn’t matter if your name is MacGregor or Yamasaki. And if you don’t live in accordance with Jewish values, it doesn’t matter if your name is Cohen or Kaplan.

Discussion Questions:

1. What is your Jewish name? If you’re not Jewish, what name would you choose for yourself if you were?

2. Do you have anything more valuable than your good name? I don’t, but do you?

Shabbat Shalom! GST will return on Monday morning!

If you liked this d’var Torah, tap the ❤️ icon and consider leaving a comment or supporting me on Ko-Fi!

Rabbi Eli Garfinkel is the spiritual leader of Temple Beth El in Somerset, New Jersey. He is the author of The JPS Jewish Heritage Torah Commentary.