To Name and To Love
From the Garden of Eden to the Wilderness of Sinai
And the Human gave names to all the cattle and to the birds of the sky and to all the wild beasts; but no fitting counterpart for a human being was found. (Genesis 2:20)
The man called his wife’s name Chavah, [Eve] because she had become the mother of all living. (Genesis 3:20)
[Moses asked God] “For how shall it be known that Your people have gained Your favor unless You go with us, so that we may be distinguished, Your people and I, from every people on the face of the earth?” And the Lord said to Moses, “I will also do this thing that you have asked; for you have truly gained My favor and I have singled you out by name.” (Exodus 33:16-17)
Take a census of the whole Israelite company [of fighters] by the clans of its ancestral houses, listing the names, every male, head by head. (Numbers 1:2)
And they said, “Come, let us build us a city, and a tower with its top in the sky, to make a name for ourselves; else we shall be scattered (pen nafutz) all over the world.” (Genesis 11:4)
God brings animals before Adam to see what names he will give them. God does not name the animals, but grants Adam the power to name. Not only this, but Adam’s process of naming seems related to his search for a counterpart. In naming the animals, he qualifies them, but also disqualifies them. His discovery of Eve as his b’shert coincides with his naming of her. God does not name Eve. God makes Man and Woman. But Woman becomes Eve only through Adam. Adam himself transforms from Ha-Adam, the generic man to Adam, a name for a man, only when he finds his beloved. To name is to single out. The animals are singled out by species, but with no further granularity. Adam does not adopt a pet Porcupine; thus, he does not call him Peter, just Porcupine.
To name is to be a creator as well as a lover. We name what we love and we love what we name. Naming establishes a being as unique. It also establishes a unique relationship between namer and named. When Abram and Sarai become Abraham and Sarah their new names suggest that God has singled them out in a new way, a theme that continues in Jacob’s transformation into Israel. The rabbis were meticulous about attribution in part because naming is life-giving. When a word of Torah is shared in the name of a sage long past, the Talmud imagines, that sage’s mouth moving in the grave, as if shocked back to life by citation. When Abraham leaves to go on his spiritual quest, following God to “the land that I will show you,” God promises to make his name great.
The Tower of Babel story turns, by contrast, on the desire not to receive or give a name, but to make one, and to make one for oneself. And not just to make for oneself a name, but to make a collective name. On all counts, the unnamed society’s approach to naming violates the core idea of a name that we are taught in the Garden of Eden. Names are given. Names are bestowed. Names are singularizing. Names establish relationship. The Babel-builders’ use a different definition of name, namely “reputation,” not the name of someone you call, but the name of someone you’ve heard about. They turn the name into an “It,” rather than appreciating the name as the vehicle that establishes a “Thou,” to borrow the language of Martin Buber.
Every day we swipe our credit cards or flash a drivers’ license, our names become forms of identification rather than forms of connection. Our names become mere data. We are followed and plotted by our browsing history and spending history, our travel footprint, and our social connections, so that we can be served up the preferences that make us likely to keep spending and scrolling. Our names in this context become avatars, giving coherence to a collection of disparate activities. But the primary purpose of a name is to help us call out and be called upon. When hearing our name we instinctually turn around. There is no name we can assign the moon to make it turn its head. The thistle will not stop its activities when we shout “thistle” at it.
Numbers begins with a census, a taking of names. Seforno comments that this name taking is no simply instrumental. It’s not about knowing who is who and what is what. It’s a fulfillment of God’s statement in Exodus that we will be favored in accordance with our names. The roll-call is a wake-up call to the realization that God takes account of each and every one of us, and that, we must see our own people through this divine lens. We have our national, tribal, and individual names and identities, each mixing to form a being in the unique image of God. The names of the tribes, derived from the names of brothers who descendent into Egyptian slavery, are now renewed on the other side of bondage. The names travel down to Egypt where they are erased and forgotten, and now they leave Egypt ready for their lot in a new land.
Both Babel and Egypt seek to erase the names of their inhabitants. Israel will become a nation of names and a representation of the power of naming. Universalist morality knows nothing of names. By contrast, Jewish morality celebrates the name as the path through which we achieve the universal. A world without names is a world without love. A world without love is a world that values bricks more than builders, and pyramids more than workers. The census, read in this light, is a triumph of the love between Adam and Eve, and among God, Abraham and Sarah.
Shabbat Shalom,
Zohar Atkins