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March 17, 2000/10 Adar II, Vol. 52, No.28
What's in a name?
Torah Study
RABBI ISMAR SCHORSCH
Vayikra/Leviticus 1:1 - 5:26
Shabbat Zakhor
I never heard my parents address each other by their first names. They showed their mutual affection, which remained palpable till late in their lives, by using pet names. My father called my mother "Mutti" (from Mutter, the German word for "mother") and my mother always called him "Schatzi" (from Schatz, the German word for "treasure").
In later years, he developed the habit of saying "Mutti" to himself audibly and often, without ever intending to attract her attention. Alone in his study, he would emit the sound of her name when he rose from his desk to get another book or just reclined to rest for a moment. She was the anchor of his life. When I came to the seminary as a student, I realized that "Schatzi" was a common name of endearment among Jews from Germany. Adele Ginzberg, affectionately known to students as Mamma Ginzberg, had never called her late, renowned husband, Professor Louis Ginzberg, anything but "Schatzi." Seminary lore recounted that whenever she attended his class in Talmud and interrupted with a comment, she would address him unselfconsciously as "Schatzi," much to the students' delight.
This is the manner in which the rabbis handle an evident redundancy in the first verse of this week's Torah portion. The book of Leviticus opens with God instructing Moses on the nature of the sacrificial system to be used in the just finished tabernacle: "The Lord called to Moses and spoke to him from the tent of Meeting, saying ... (Leviticus 1:1)." First, God addresses Moses by name, intimately and affectionately, and only then does the conversation ensue. The force of the verb vayikra (and God called) conveys a long-standing relationship. Moses has done his task exceedingly well. The way God pronounces his name intimates divine satisfaction. We can usually tell what is coming by how someone initially pronounces our name.
One graphic midrash envisions God taking up residence in the Tabernacle and finding everything executed exactly as prescribed. The final two chapters of the book of Exodus had stressed after the completion and installation of each artifact that it was done "as God had commanded Moses," as if each object were stamped with God's endorsement. God's reaction resembled that of a king who had instructed his architect to build him a new palace. Like a satisfied sovereign, God summoned Moses, who had been waiting respectfully outside, to enter the Tabernacle. God could not have been more pleased. Indeed, this midrash goes on to assert that the phrase "as God had commanded Moses" appears 18 times.
Consider the pagination of a Torah scroll. Its columns of unvocalized and unpunctuated Hebrew text are not divided into chapters or verses but into units of varying lengths, broken up by an enclosed empty space in the middle of a line or an open space at the end of a line. In printed prayer books, arranged by chapter and verse, those ancient spaces are marked.
The rabbis noticed the number of times the phrase "as God had commanded Moses" appears because each text unit in chapters 39 and 40 of Exodus, except the last two, end with that refrain. The units were demarcated by the phrase to underscore that the construction of the Tabernacle and all its trappings complied fully with God's word.
Nor is this the only instance where God calls Moses by name before instructing him. The midrash states that each time God addresses Moses, God first lovingly calls him by name.
Could it be, the midrash finally speculates, that God might also precede the cessation of communication, the void between the visitations with a fond mention of Moses' name? And if that is unimaginable, then what is the purpose of the interruptions in revelation or the empty spaces in our text? To which the midrash responds with psychological insight: to absorb and internalize what has just been transmitted.
Without the benefit of frequent stretches of silence, the Torah turns into a torrent of discordant voices. In truth, were our lives punctuated with periods of silence, we would hear God calling us by name more often.
Ismar Schorsch is the chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary.
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