Shabbat Va-Era 5767 Rabbi Dr Andrew Goldstein 20 January 2007

“What’s in a name?”  Did it matter much to Moses that God was known to his ancestors as El Shaddai, but he was being given another name…a name we can’t even pronounce.  No doubt Moses knew how to say it, after all the Torah tells us he knew God face to face, but we are left with a four letter word:  Yod Hey Vav Hey that we are forbidden to say, using Adonai instead.   Curious.  

Volumes have been written on the real meaning of the Tetragramaton to give the four letter word its scholarly title.   Some tie it to the Hebrew root “to be”, and so posit it means:  “I am what I am” or “I will be what I will be”, or even “the Source of Being”  Surely it can’t mean “I am whatever you make of me”.  Most agree it has to do with eternal existence and so in our current Liberal Jewish prayer books we make it “Eternal One”, following the older German title “der Erwige”…the Eternal.   Better than “Lord” the old-fashioned translation that was not a translation of the Tetragramaton but of its substitute Adonai.

Rabbi Laurence Kushner, who has written many intriguing books on themes of modern mysticism and spirituality has pointed out that the four letters can all be used as vowels…imagine a word with only vowels, a Scrabble nightmare, unless you are playing in Finnish!  But that’s the point says Kushner, the name is really like a breath, not a spoken word.  Maybe that’s what it means in Genesis when it says God put divine breath into the lump of clay and it became a human being.  We are just earthly matter, a bundle of material atoms, it is only the breath of God, (some call it a soul) that makes us different, that makes us a human being.  

A friend of this Rabbi Kushner is the playwright David Mamet, and the two have collaborated on a small book commentating on each sedra of the Torah.  Mamets comment on the episode I read from the Torah is:” And God said He had been known as El Shaddai, but henceforward would be called Yod Hey Vav Hey --   Why did God change His name?  Too Jewish!”   El Shaddai, too Jewish ?   Maybe sounds it, but in fact it is probably more ancient than Jewish, a very ancient name, for “shad” is a breast, and the origin of El Shaddai could be, “the god with the breasts”…just think of all those primitive clay and wooden models, images, you have seen in Museum showcases.  The god who nurtures and nourishes its devotees, and if you think about it, it implies that the first God our ancestors worshipped was a woman…El Shaddai, the modern feminists are right all along.  Although they would take issue with the usual translation as “Almighty”, for they would see might as a male quality that leads to all the aggression in the world.  

However the rabbinic midrash traces a different etymology.   “Dai” means “enough”…we know it from the seder song “Dayyenu”… and so Shaddai become “It is enough”.  And the Midrash tells an interesting tale.  On the second day of Creation God created sea AND dry land, but there was no fixed boundary between them  And picking up on another ancient mythology, the rabbis depict the sea as a watery dragon which kept attacking the dry land and seeking to gobble it up.  And so God had to step in and say “Dai.. Its enough” and create the sea shore for a boundary.  That’s why it says in the Psalms (104:9) “You set a border they may not cross lest they return to cover the land.”   God as Shaddai says “enough”….well after a week of terrible wind, of ever more warnings  about global warming, of the ice-caps melting, of the sea levels rising to cross the boundaries and flood great parts of the earth, we once again are forced to ask:  “When will we human beings say “Dayyenu” its enough, we must take urgent and real action to stop our environment changing, we must say “Dayyenu to our way of life and daily actions that are set on destroying the natural boundaries that allow us to live in this planet.

Yet, how typical, outdoing the real bad news of the week, hurricanes, wars, terrorism, has been the sad goings on the “Big Brother House”.  And here it was not male aggression to blame, but that from a trinity of coarse females.  Yes of course the show highlighted the racial discrimination that affects so many in society, but for me the villain was not the three women in the house, or their object, for all were willingly on public display risking humiliation.  But no, it is the whole genre of television, from Big Brother, to the Quiz shows, to even “Strictly come Dancing”.  In all of them to a greater or lesser extent license is given to humiliate people and laud only the winners.  The not so skilful, the unfortunate, the weak are there to be humiliated and verbally abused.  This is popular entertainment.  No blood yet, but  is it much different from a Roman circus?  Is it any wonder there are yobs in society, bad manners and cruelty, bullying all around?  Surely it is time to say “Dayyenu” it is enough, the boundaries of good taste and civilised behaviours have been breached. El Shaddai we need your Almighty inspiration to make us see sense.  

And I can’t get out of my mind a song the black Gospel choir sang in our synagogue at a pre-Chanukah CCJ meeting:  “El Shaddai, Elohim, Adonai” …the two names of our sedra juxtaposed…and rhyming.

What’s in a name? In a way it doesn’t matter what we call God, or how we picture God,  for each name can give different meanings to our lives.  El Shaddai might inspire us to think about the need to maintain boundaries in our lives and world.  Adonai, the name revealed to Moses, but only, it seems, to urge him on to go and seek the redemption of the Children of Israel from Egyptian slavery, yet it is this name we evoke in our dearest hope for blessing:  May the eternal One guard us and bless us, may the Eternal One turn towards us with favour, and may the Eternal One…Adonai, give us the greatest of blessings:  Shalom, peace.