Turn It Again: Torah Wisdom for Today

In Pirkei Avot, a book of maxims in the Mishnah, an ancient rabbi, Ben Bag-Bag said about Torah study, “Hafokh bah, va’Hafokh vah, d’khola bah.” Turn it over and over, for everything is in it. For two thousand years, that’s what Jews have done. Here is another turning.

Parshat Vayishlach 2024

Tattooed: A Name is the Root of the Soul

As a young boy, one of my favorite folktales was Rumpelstiltskin, the small magical being who could spin straw into gold. This story had just enough drama and danger, while highlighting the possibility of transformation and the power of names to keep me endlessly enthralled by it. Most cultures have some version of this venerable archetype, and this week’s Torah reading showcases how very ancient our fascination with the potency of names is.

In Vayishlach, after wrestling all night with an angel, the patriarch Jacob receives the name Israel. The individual becomes a nation, which is about as thorough a transmutation as one could imagine. What does this name change mean, and how can it offer us insight for our own lives?

At the end of the 18th century, in his Torah commentary, the Kedushat Levi, Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev wrote that “a name is the root of the soul…and when a name is changed, there is also a change to the soul.” (Kosak, Trans.)

We see this clearly with Abraham and Sarah; according to Jewish law, one is not supposed to call Abraham or Sarah by their original names. In other words, their transformation was so complete, that referring to them by their birth names would be akin to spiritual “deadnaming.”

What is curious about Jacob is the nature of his spiritual growth; he received an “additional” name of Israel, while his original name was not uprooted. Those of us who have a professional title or a nickname understand how we can possess two natures, depending on the context. Even without this, though, most of us recognize the complexity of being human.

Rabbi Yehuda Aryeh Leib Alter, author of the Sefat Emet, was a 19th century Polish thinker who expands this multifaceted notion of identity. Commenting on our verse, he suggests that, “A person must perfect the body so the soul’s power is reflected, thus becoming ‘Yisrael’…In each Jew, the body and soul conflict, and Shabbat represents this harmony, offering a taste of the world to come where bodies will be perfected like souls.” (Kosak, Trans.)

While Judaism doesn’t possess the sort of stark divide between the body and soul that we find in Christianity, who hasn’t striven to balance our material needs with our aspirational desires to be our best selves? Rare are those individuals who never experience this sort of internal struggle.

The power of our names to shape us, or to record a transformation that has occurred, is so common that in ancient Mesopotamia, royalty often assumed a “throne name” to emphasize their divine authority. Similarly, during their coming of age ceremonies, in many traditional African tribes, such as the Zulu, Yoruba, or Akan, it was common for the child to assume a new name to mark the new responsibilities of adulthood.

Names are serious business. When individuals were observed under magnetic resonance imaging and their names were called, their entire brains lit up. We literally show up when our names are used. A name is the magic sound that summons our attention to the one who uses it. No wonder Rumpelstiltskin guarded his name with tremendous care. Most of us probably can remember a parent calling us by our full name whenever our behavior crossed a line. Suddenly, we were brought face to face not only with our parents, but with the consequences of of own actions. There is also a way that Jacob’s two names remind us that change is never total. Even when we do grow, the “Jacobs” in us, the older parts of us, never disappear; they remain latent, surfacing at family reunions or perhaps during moments of crisis. Jacob reminds us that we can’t fully escape the gravity of our history, nor should we want to.

Strangely, this surfaces the idea of tattoos. While Miami Beach, Florida may be the city with the highest percentage of tattoos, Portland is in the running. Until two years ago, I thought of tattoos as magical totems that would preserve a person’s belief, values, or even relationships. Given how much we all change, I could never imagine any tattoo that would remain relevant to me after ten, let alone twenty years and was fascinated by those who weren’t similarly troubled. Yet during the Depp-Heard defamation trial, I came to a new understanding when Johnny Depp spoke of how his tattoos are a visual autobiography, marking important milestones in his life. They represent the past more than the present or future. But they are also a reminder of the root of the soul.

There is a way that the world can make us forget our source, history, and lineage, which we do at our own risk. These, after all, give us tremendous power and persistence to persevere. It is equally true that the world can strip us of our deepest dreams, causing us to be little more than a stagnant past that no longer serves us. Jacob’s tremendous spiritual capacities remind us, as the Sefat Emet does, that our personal world-to-come depends on how well we can meld the names we were given with the ones we would claim for ourselves.