Q:
Is there anything in the first name?
A:
There’s everything in the first name. It’s like saying to Hakodosh Boruch Hu “לך אני – I am Yours.” Your name shows you belong to Hashem. If you call yourself Bertram instead of Boruch, you belong to Bertram. The nation of Bertram. If you want to keep them, stay there with them, Hashem says.
כל ישראל יש להם חלק לעולם הבא – If you’re a Yisroel, I promise you Olam Haba (Sanhedrin 10:1). But you have to identify. If you identify with Bertram, then go to the Bertrams.
The last name, it’s not so easy to change, but the first name you can change.
And surely if you’re a rabbi; a rabbi surely should have a Jewish first name. Rabbi Norman? That’s not identifying with Hashem. What’s wrong with Nachman? With Nosson? You belong to the Normans? Norman Mailer and all the other resha’im, yimach shemom v’zichrom. There are a lot of Normans that are in Gehenom today and many are on the way to Gehenom. “So if you want to be with the Normans, go ahead,” Hashem says.
And therefore, your first name is your choice. Who cares what your parents called you? Give yourself a new name and use that name with pride.
Now sometimes—I’ll leave over a little loophole—sometimes you have gentile customers and you want to conceal your identity. I’m not going to tell you what to do. I don’t want to say it’s right or not. But when there’s no reason, let’s say you’re a rabbi—all your customers are Jews—so why should you conceal your identity? And therefore, there’s everything in the first name.
Now some names are a pity that people lose an opportunity. Here’s a man who has a daughter and he calls her Rishonah — First daughter. A meshugener. Rishona, my first daughter. Is that a name of one of our forefathers, our great mothers? He takes a name that means nothing at all. The fact that it’s in Hebrew? And he’s calling her number one. Number one! A name of a daughter, number one.
Or he calls his daughter Ilana. Ilana is a Russian name. He says, “No, it’s Hebrew. It means a tree; ilan. Ilana is a female tree.” No; ilan is a tree and Ilana is a Russian name. That’s not a name to give to a Jewish girl.
And therefore, everything is in the first name. It shows who you belong to.
(February 1989)
