What in A Name?

God.  I don’t know where that word comes from.

HaShem means “The Name.”  We use this appellation to describe God as the unmentionable.  The other, more familiar names of God are exclusively reserved for prayer.  All told, there are some seventy names for God.  And those are just the Hebrew ones!  Some are in the feminine form, others are masculine.  There are no neutral words in Hebrew.   Every word has a gender. 

God is a rabbi, sage, healer, and creator….  God is even called “A Man of War.” Look closely at the few names mentioned for God; they are all specific and limiting. Every word describing God must be inaccurate.  God is more than a “name”. God is beyond a rabbi: Not just a healer, God is all things.  In fact, words get in the way.  They may stand as forces that prevent us from entering the Palace.

On the Holy Days we saw how references to God were almost exclusively as a melekh, a king.  Rosh Hashanna and Yom Kippur are events when we imagine God as a king on a throne.  What does a king do?  He judges.  The image is austere and forbidding.

As a child, the vision of God sitting on a throne, pensively gazing out at His subjects, was the most natural picture to conjure up when thinking about God.  It makes sense.  After all, children are used to authority figures telling what to do and mysteriously knowing their most secret places.  ‘God must be like that too’, they consider.   We do the same in a more worldly fashion.  At times of seething anger God becomes the “Avenger’ or “man of War”.  During moments of intense pain God is the “Healer of Shattered Hearts.”

In other words, we name to name God.  We are inner directed to find words that sum up our needy feelings.  That is why when Moshe rabbenu asks God by which name he should call Him, God responds, “I am that I am”.  Nothing else is needed.  I guess God knew that as quickly as word would spread of God’s existence there would be an infinite number of names attached to His Presence (that’s another one).  We need associations that make us feel as if God were comprised of attributes that directly answer our needs.

That is why the Rambam called any name that we apply to God a metaphor.  It simply must stand for something else.  God is too great to be limited by a pint-sized word.  Any attempt to label God is absurd.

I lived for several years in London.  During the first months of living there I discovered how often my English was misunderstood.  Even something as simple as holding up two fingers for the ‘peace’ sign invited some rather painful responses.   Someone once called the United States and Great Britain as “two countries divided by the same language.”  Only shared experiences yields understanding.  In fact, I find it amazing that we understand as much a s we do.  I suspect that most of what we understand from others derives from a visceral comprehension.  That is, we only understand what touches us emotionally.  The cadence, voice fluctuations, emotional vibes all frame our understanding of the spoken word.  The words themselves are inadequate at best; at worst, they lie.

All this is to say that often what gets in the way of the pray-er is the wall of words, which has mounted between God and us.  We do not quite get it.  What do the words of this Psalm have to do with me?  What if my metaphor for God does not work here?  Then it is time to do one of the most difficult things any religious person can ever do: daven.  Not just mouth the words.  Not just fulfil the mitzvah of prayer.  Daven.   While most Jews have sung and recited the words of the siddur with some frequency few of us have risen to the level of really speaking to God about matters of the heart. 

It does not matter what we call God.  Language obfuscates, it confuses, and makes the art of davenning a little too facile.  What God wants is for someone to speak with Him.  Consider all the Hasidic tales, which are about prayers not being strong enough to enter the portals of heaven.  That is because they lack the soul, neshama, necessary to give them flight.  Odder yet, is that is precisely what the soul demands as well.  It yearns to speak the deepest thoughts that lurk within.  “The Lord is near to all who call upon Him, To all who call upon Him in truth.”  Truth emanates from the heart.