Good names, bad names

The concept of a shem tov (literally “good name”) features twice in Pirkei Avot. Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai praises the value of a good reputation at Avot 4:17 where he teaches:

“There are three crowns—the crown of Torah, the crown of priesthood and the crown of sovereignty—but the crown of a good name surpasses them all”.

Hillel agrees that a good reputation is a valuable asset, but points at Avot 2:8 to its limitations:

“One who acquires a good name acquires it for himself; but one who acquires words of Torah acquires life in the World to Come”.

So is a good name, a good reputation, a sort of formal recognition of one’s personal qualities and achievements, or is it merely a non-transferable label that ultimately adds up to nothing of substance?  Avot does not resolve this issue. There are however two further teachings on which we should reflect before drawing any conclusions.

The first is another teaching in the name of Hillel, at Avot 1:13: negid shema, avad shemei. There is some disagreement as to the precise meaning of this neat Aramaic soundbite, but it is generally rendered along the lines of “a name made great is a name destroyed”, suggesting that the cultivation of fame and a good reputation will be in vain if it is not done for the sake of Heaven. The second is a baraita at Avot 6:9, taught in the name of Rabbi Yose ben Kisma:

Once I was walking along the road and a man came across me. He greeted me and I returned his greeting. He said to me: "Rabbi, what place do you come from?” I said to him: "I’m from a great city of sages and scholars”. He said to me: "Rabbi, would you like to live with us in our place? I will give you a million dinars of gold, precious stones and pearls". I said to him: "If you were to give me all the silver, gold, precious stones and pearls in the world, I wouldn’t live anywhere but in a place of Torah”….

The baraita continues by affirming the point made by Hillel above, that it is through the acquisition of Torah that one acquires one’s World to Come. The curious thing about this baraita is that the stranger who encounters Rabbi Yose ben Kisma asks where he comes from but does not ask his name. This would suggest that the Rabbi’s worth has been assessed by reference to (possibly) his appearance, (more likely) his behaviour and demeanour but not by reference to his name and reputation.

There is another sense in which a name is taken to be “good” or “bad”, where it is not so much the reputation as the name itself that is at stake. This theme is developed by Rabbi Yaakov Hillel in volume 1 of his Eternal Ethics from Sinai, where at Avot 1:3 he introduces a teaching by Antigonos Ish Socho with a discussion of the name Antigonos and of the propriety or otherwise of giving a child a non-Jewish name. He writes:

“If Antigonos of Socho, the saintly Tanna who received the Oral Tradition from Shimon HaTzaddik, were alive today, he would no doubt be encouraged to have his name changed, a practice that has gained considerable popularity in our times. Antigonos is no more a Biblical name that Hurkenos, Sumchus or Tarfon. These names, all from non-Jewish sources, were given long ago to children who developed into some of our people’s greatest Torah sages. When parents select a name for a child, the best choice is clearly a Jewish name, because the name of a righteous, pious, and scholarly Jew will have a positive influence on the child. But let us say that, for whatever reasons, a parent chooses to name a daughter Zlata or Altun rather than Rivka or Rahel. That has become this particular child’s name and it should not be tampered with”.

Following further discussion of the correct spelling of names, divine inspiration in choosing them and the mechanism for changing a name, Rabbi Hillel continues:

“…[C]urrent trends in name-changing have it that Rahel is a ‘very bad name’, and absolutely no one should be named Rahel. … Our forefather Yaakov, a very great Mekubal, was surely privy to whatever inside information today’s practitioners would like to claim. If Rahel is a ‘bad name’, why did he not feel impelled to change the name of his beloved wife? The same could be said of Rabbi Akiva and countless other great Torah scholars throughout our history whose wives bore the name of the Matriarch Rahel”.

I had no idea that Rahel/Rachel was a ‘very bad name’ and wonder if any of my more kabbalistically inclined readers might enlighten me. Be that as it may, my personal feeling, for what it is worth, is that if the reputation that attaches to a person’s name is indeed personal—as Hillel suggests at Avot 2:8—we should not assume that the attributes associated with that person’s name are in any sense transferable. Each person should be known by their name but valued in accordance with their individual attributes. It also seems to me that giving a child an auspicious name from Tanach or traditional Jewish sources may also be a laudable practice. But it offers no guarantee that children will absorb or display the qualities of the person after whom they are named, as the roll-call of Jewish prisoners in Israel and the diaspora sadly indicates.

Iniquitous names and Torah titles

This piece was originally posted on the Judaism Reclaimed Facebook Group.

There exists a grey area in Jewish learning, which lies between the Torah shebek’tav (the Written Torah) and the Torah shebe’al peh (the Oral Torah). This is the area of speculation as to their interface. To what extent does the written word foreshadow the oral tradition, and how might the oral tradition find its roots in the Tanach? In areas of halachah the interfaces are usually quite easy to spot, even if their extent and significance require extensive Talmudic analysis. In the field of mussar and middot—moral guidance—the connection between the written and spoken Torah is often much less clear.

Parashat Shelach Lecha opens with a summons to Moshe: God tells him to send forth men to spy out the land. Even after describing them as leaders, the Torah double-underlines their importance by describing them as anashim (“men of significance”) and rashei benei Yisrael (“heads of the Children of Israel”). In no other place in the Torah is the importance, the status, of the tribal heads described in such deliberately laboured terms.

Now that we fully understand how important are these men who are being tasked with spying out the land, the Torah gives the name of each of them together with his tribal affiliation. Unusually this list is book-ended with two apparently superfluous statements. Before identifying them the Torah states: “These are the names…”, though this fact is plain to the reader. At the conclusion of the list the Torah adds, again without any apparent need, the words “These are their names…”.  Two of the named leaders—Yehoshua and Kalev—excel in the discharge of their duties. The rest fail, are disgraced and immediately receive the severest punishment.

To the traditional Torah scholar it is axiomatic that no word is unnecessary: apparently excess verbiage cannot be dismissed as the product of sloppy editing or as evidence of multiple authorship. Instead, extra words must be construed and understood in the light of their context in the narrative of the Torah and in accordance with a long-standing inherited portfolio of religious and cultural norms that together comprise the Jewish religion. So how might we address the issue of what the Torah is seeking to teach us here?

The Torah text appears to be performing in literary format the task of placing the nominated spies on a pedestal and shining a spotlight on them. For them, anonymity is not an option; this is no secret mission. They are entrusted with a responsibility of monumental magnitude, that of surveying the Promised Land before the imminent entry to it of those whom they lead.  This mission, instigated by God Himself and placed in their hands by Moshe, is unprecedented.

The oral Torah does not ignore this list of names either. In the course of a lengthy discourse on the spies and their conduct, the Talmud (Sotah 34b) records the following in the name of the Amora Rabbi Yitzchak:  

“We possess a tradition from our forefathers that the spies were named after their actions, but only with one [name] has it survived with us: Setur ben Michael: Setur because he undermined [satar] the works of the Holy One, blessed be He; and Michael because he suggested that God [El] was weak [mach]”.  

Rabbi  Yochanan adds: 

“We can also explain Nachbi ben Vophsi: Nachbi because he hid [hichbi] the words of the Holy One, blessed be He; and Vophsi because he stepped over [pasa] the attributes of the Holy One, blessed be He”.

The Torah Temimah comments that there is no doubt that the fathers of these two spies did not name their sons on account of their future misconduct. That would be simply impossible. Rather, the spies’ names caused them to err. He does not explain how this might happen but we are left to assume that even a relatively tenuous connection between a person’s name and his future conduct might enhance or facilitate the doing of good (or in this case bad) deeds.  This phenomenon is not confined to the columns of the Torah. Examples in real life include the late neurologist Lord Brain, New York-based litigation lawyer Sue H. Yoo and the principal engineer at the UK’s Water Research Centre, Andy Drinkwater. 

We do not know how the original explanations of the names of the other failed spies were lost and we are not invited to create our own. This rather suggests that the identification by name of these spies, and the Torah’s deliberate emphasis of their names and their status, is a practical example of Hillel’s teaching at Avot 1:13 that: “A name made great is a name (or reputation) destroyed”.  However, I have yet to find a commentator on Avot who links the spies to this mishnah. 

The success of the two good spies, Yehoshua and Kalev, is also recorded in the Torah by reference to their names. Yehoshua’s original name is Hoshea but he is “rebranded” though a prefix, the letter yud, which has the effect of incorporating God’s name into his own. The clue to Kalev’s success however lies in his father’s name, listed variously in written and oral sources as Yephunneh, Chetzron and Kenaz.  According to the Yerushalmi (Yevamot 7:10), his father’s name is both Yephunneh and Chetzron; the Talmud Bavli (Temurah 16a) then explains Yephunneh as indicating that Kalev turned (panah) from the counsel of the other spies.

It is obvious that the names of Yehoshua and Kalev, so strongly promoted with the narrative of spies, are not made great in order to illustrate Hillel’s maxim that a name made great is a name destroyed. A later teaching in Avot 2:8 and coincidentally also by Hillel, is that one who acquires a good name acquires it for himself alone, while one who acquires Torah acquires life in the world to come. This second mishnah could very well be applied to Yehoshua and Kalev. Both had great leadership qualities and outstanding reputations for honesty and integrity, yet when they died they could not take their reputations with them—and neither had a son who might be said to inherit it from him.