Excerpted from Rabbi Aaron Goldscheider’s Torah United: Teachings on the Weekly Parasha from Rav Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, and the Chassidic Masters, co-published by OU Press and Ktav Publishing House
The Name That Calls Us
Vayetze is the parashah of names. In it, eleven children are born and each of them is given a unique name. The Ishbitzer Rebbe contemplated the underlying meaning of names. Each of us has been given a name, but what is its true significance?
In the days of the Patriarchs, wrote the rebbe, parents were able to discern the disposition of their child already at birth, and to give them an appropriate name. Rachel and Leah were given names that expressed their essential nature by their father Lavan. Rachel is named after an ewe, whose submissiveness before shearing reflects her restraint. Leah’s name comes from a root indicating weakness, because she drained herself in supplication to the Almighty. It follows that the names of Yaakov’s children are also not random but verbal distillations of their essences.
Regarding the notion of names, the Ishbitzer further quoted a thought-provoking Midrash: “A person has three names: The name that your parents gave you; the name that others call you; and the name you acquire for yourself.” Clearly, the Midrash does not refer to actual names but is offering insight into the human psyche. The first name is given by parents who name their child based on his or her innate personality, and such names are the ones recorded in Vayetze. The second “name” derives from one’s accomplishments, stature, or professional life, and might be “physician,” “mechanic,” “lawyer,” “academic,” and so forth. It is how others see us. But what is the third name that we “acquire”?
The Ishbitzer Rebbe explained that the third name is “the rectification and healing of what one is lacking, even if the lack is imprinted at birth.” He does not mean purifying oneself from sin, but developing and ennobling one’s personality to make oneself a fuller person. The old aphorism has it that “you need to know yourself in order to grow.” Evidently, the rebbe was teaching his Chassidim, and by extension us, to be more aware of their “third name.” He impressed upon them the need for personal development and growth to realize the ideals and virtues that had not yet found a place in their lives.
We limit ourselves severely if we relate only to our first two “names.” If we aren’t working on ourselves actively, we can all too easily slide into a slippery rut from which escape is difficult. Our first “name” is rooted in our past, and the “second” in the present. The third is not a name we are called but a name that calls us to look to the future and encompasses our yearnings, personal victories, and steady growth. The
Maharal beautifully captured this idea:
Man is not created in his ultimate perfection. Man was created to realize his perfection. That is [the meaning of the verse], “Man is born to toil” ( Job 5:7) – man is born and exists for the aim of this toil, which is the actualization of his perfection.
Rabbi David Aaron, a contemporary master teacher of Kabbalah, tells the story of a guest his family once hosted for Shabbat dinner in the Old City of Yerushalayim. The guest had stopped in Israel after traveling the world. Her previous stop had been Japan, where she was, in her own words, “looking for herself.” Rabbi Aaron’s daughter, eight years old at the time, turned to her father with a very confused look. She opened her eyes wide and asked: “Looking for herself? I don’t understand. How did she lose herself? And if she was never in Japan before, why would she think she would find herself there?”
Rabbi Aaron shares this humorous anecdote in order to illustrate that, truthfully, we do carry multiple layers of identity. When we speak about “finding ourselves,” we are actually touching on a profound idea. We are far more than just the identity that we embody from birth, and even more than our hard-won professional attainments and social status. In the Ishbitzer Rebbe’s terms, we have a “third name” that is our very essence; it is what we call the soul. It is the seat of our strivings, lofty aspirations, and growth. Rabbi Aaron pithily terms these layers found in every human being “me, myself and I.” “Me” is the bundle of traits present at birth; “myself ” is the long string of accomplishments; and “I” is our essence, the divine spark within.
The Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Chassidut, similarly taught that a person consists of body, soul, and name. The Hebrew word for name (שֵׁם) comprises the middle two letters of the word for soul (נְשָׁמה), and so is conceived as the core of the soul. In other words, our name defines us, and as we have seen we possess more than one. Nevertheless, the divine image embedded within us is the core that fuels our creativity, propels us beyond our seeming limitations, and drives us toward becoming the most magnificent human beings we can be.
