Parashat Va’era (5761)

With God’s help. Friday eve of the holy Sabbath, Parashat Va’era, 5761

The Names of the Holy One, blessed be He, and Names in General

Our portion opens with a statement of self-identification from the mouth of the Holy One, blessed be He, to Moses: ‘..And He said to him, I am the Lord; and I appeared

to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by My name, the Lord, I was not known to them.’ The Holy One, blessed be He, as it were

is introducing Himself to Moses, and explaining to him that the name by which He revealed Himself to him, the Four-Letter Name, denotes

the same being that appeared to the Patriarchs as God Almighty. The commentators discuss, in connection with these verses,

the meaning of God’s various names, and the meaning of the Divine Name in general. The Holy One, blessed be He, has

different names, and the new name revealed in these verses, the Four-Letter Name, is called the proper name. Beyond it there are

other names, and there are also descriptions.

The fundamental question in this connection is what the meaning of names in general is, and in particular of names as against

descriptions. In general, different objects (including human beings) can be designated in two ways:

description and name. A description uses various characteristics in order to point to the object, whereas its

name is arbitrary. For example, when I want to indicate Moses our teacher, I can describe him

as ‘the leader of the Israelites at the time of the Exodus from Egypt,’ ‘the greatest of the prophets,’ and the like, and I can

simply say his name, ‘Moses son of Amram.’ The description is composed of characteristics of the object, whereas

the name is an arbitrary word attached to it for reasons of convenience, so that one can

address and designate it easily and conveniently.

On the other hand, characteristics of an object, at least some of them, can change, whereas the name of

the object, in principle, cannot change (except, perhaps, by social convention). Something lacking

meaning cannot really change, and even if one changes it, there is no significance to that.

The distinction I have drawn here between an object’s name and its description is based on certain approaches

in analytic philosophy, and is not accepted by all. The discussions of this issue are conducted around what

the well-known British philosopher Bertrand Russell called ‘the problem of denoting,’ which deals with the question of referring

to objects. This philosophical issue raises various problems concerning the use of these two types

of designators (name and description).

One of the problems that arises in this connection is the meaning of a description, or of a sentence that contains

a description. Usually it is understood that the meaning of a name is the real object in the world to which

the name in question refers. If so, several philosophers ask, what is the meaning of a sentence such as ‘Moses our

teacher is the man who brought Israel up from Egypt.’ Seemingly, the meaning of the expression ‘Moses our teacher’ is

the man designated by that name, and the meaning of the description ‘the man who brought Israel up from Egypt’ also

is that same man. If so, we have obtained a sentence of the type: ‘Moses our teacher is Moses our teacher.’

One may object to this and say that the linkage of a description to a name does indeed have meaning, for I

am pointing to the fact that the bearer of that name has the property that appears in the description. The man called

‘Moses our teacher’ possesses the property ‘being the leader of Israel at the Exodus from Egypt.’ By contrast, when

a sentence links two names and identifies them, then it seems that it truly has no meaning. If

we take, for example, the sentence: ‘Romain Gary is Émile Ajar’ (two well-known French writers

who turned out to be one and the same person, one the pseudonym of the other), we obtain a true sentence, but one apparently devoid of meaning.

Its meaning is that Émile Ajar is Émile Ajar.

This phenomenon expresses the fact that since a name lacks essential meaning, because it is an

arbitrary designator, then such substitutions of names have no meaning. These are simply two ways of designating the same

object. This situation recalls the joke about the author of ‘Macbeth,’ about whom people whisper that, contrary to the

accepted view, it was not Shakespeare but his cousin, who was also called Shakespeare. The problem is

that since the meaning of a name is the person to whom it points, then that cousin is precisely

the Shakespeare about whom everyone is speaking.

In the verses that open the portion, seemingly the same problem appears. The Holy One, blessed be He, identifies two names

under which He appears, and we apparently obtain a sentence devoid of meaning. Its meaning is: God is

God.

In the context of the Divine Name, such a sentence perhaps has more meaning than it does in the context of ordinary names.

As is known, God’s names are not arbitrary in the same sense in which ordinary names are

arbitrary. God’s names have meaning, and in fact each of them has a different meaning (the reader

is invited to consider, accordingly, what the difference is between God’s names and His descriptions. A hint

toward the solution, God willing, in next week’s essay).

These matters are succinctly summarized in a sentence from chapter 1 of the gate ‘The Four-Letter Name’ in Rabbi Moshe

Cordovero’s Pardes, who writes as follows (and see also Rabbi Isaiah Horowitz’s introduction to his book Shenei Luchot HaBerit,

in the section ‘House of the Lord’):

And the Four-Letter Name, or the other names, are not related to Him as a proper name is related to human beings. For human names are conventional; that is,

our father Abraham agreed to call his son Isaac for a reason or for reasons, but not because the name

Isaac is attributed to any characteristic whatsoever, nor because his name indicates his essence. This is not so with His blessed names, for all

of them indicate the characteristic of that which is designated by them.

In our context, one may say that the name God Almighty is a manifestation of God in the attribute of judgment, whereas

the proper name, the Four-Letter Name, is a manifestation of Him in the attribute of mercy. If so, the Holy One, blessed be He, is not merely identifying Himself

before Moses our teacher, but announcing to him an era of divine governance of a new kind: governance through the attribute of

mercy. Speedily in our days, amen.

Have a peaceful Sabbath

This may be consigned to respectful disposal in any synagogue or house of study. Comments will be gratefully received.

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