Ask The Rabbi: Use of "HaShem" in Reform Context

Since my interviews last year, I have consistently maintained that if there is something odd or confusing encountered in any of the changes to our services that have come up while I have led services, that I would much prefer that the questions be asked directly to me than spoken about in frustration where I am unable to aid in the dialogue. If something comes up, I encourage you to email me at rabbi@sinaileeds.uk with the heading “Ask the Rabbi” and I will happily answer them in order in this space. This week, the question was “Why do you sometimes say ‘HaShem?’ Isn’t that either superstition of something associated with Orthodoxy?”

I like to call this the Great Jewish Name Game. The simple answer to this question from me (which you know by now I cannot only give a simple answer-- it is a bit like a compulsion at this point to get as complicated as possible before I am done) is that I like to differentiate between offering a blessing and the teaching of a blessing. For example, if I am lighting the Shabbat candles, that is the fulfillment of a mitzvah, a sacred obligation, and in Jewish tradition that is accompanied by a blessing or a brachah. If I teach someone the blessing or speak about the blessing, I am not actually making a blessing, and I prefer to differentiate these two modalities. I know this probably sounds obvious, but it is worth looking at the levels of motivation for performing a brachah.

At the most obvious levels, uttering a blessing is either fulfilling an obligation or following a tradition. In this perfectly acceptable and beautiful level of Jewish engagement, replacing the name of the Eternal used in the blessing with “HaShem” could indeed seem frivolous or superstitious. And certainly at the level where the non-recitation of a brachah is seen as a transgression of Jewish Law, the usage of HaShem is as well an attempt to avoid transgression, hence the association with more Orthodox streams of Judaism (a point I make without judgement or wishing to be pejorative.) But in my case, the uttering of a blessing is my attempt in an almost Zen way to slow down my day and once again become present. A moment of lighting a Shabbat candle or smelling a beautifully scented rose or even shouting l’chaim with members of Sinai while sampling the latest donated bottle of distilled grains can be just another moment to fade with the day or we can add a moment of recognition that we have been “brought to this time” and let it take on a larger context.

In this interpretation of blessing, I want to differentiate the mitzvah of teaching or learning (talmud torah) with the actual performance of the taught mitzvah. My use of Baruch Ata HaShem, Elokeinu Melech HaOlam therefore parallels methodologies in other streams of Judaism, but in my own personal practice and how I have chosen to pass on Torah to those that wish to learn with me, I see the differentiation between the formula of the blessing and the replacement words in the teaching of the blessing to be about mindfulness. “What am I actually engaging in in this moment?” By no means do I believe I am “right,” I simply believe that this sort of mindfulness is valuable in both spiritual and practical contexts and choose to teach it as one of the many possible ways we can engage in prayer.

The more complicated answer lies in what I believe to be the profound mystical core of Jewish theology found explicitly in the Torah. In the time that Torah was being formed in oral traditions and fragmentary writings, Judaism was seeking to differentiate itself from the Canaanite tribes from which they evolved over millennia. In Canaanite religion, the pantheon was filled with gods and goddess believed to have dominion over specific aspects of life, many of these gods made generic in the Torah into “Ba’al” and “Ashterah” (or sacred post). “Ba’al” simply means “master,” but the specific aspect of Ba’al being invoked required more to the name. Sometime Ba’al would be invoked as the god of a specific place, such as Ba’al of Lebanon, and sometimes with a specific power or dominion, such as Ba’al Rapi-umi, the destroyer of death. Thus the full name of a Canaanite deity was required to understand their dominion or power.

Two times in Torah we are given an opportunity to move beyond this idolatrous theology. The first is in Parashat Shemot when Moses explicitly asks the Eternal “When I come to the Israelites and say to them ‘The God of your Ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is [this god’s] name?’ what shall I say to them?” Moses was simply asking the most logical question he could. “What is your power and dominion?” We backward project our monotheism onto a question asked by a polytheist and can’t figure out why Moses was acting so daft, when in reality Moses’ question made and makes all the sense in the world.

The answer given is brilliant and worthy of the great mystical utterances of history: “Ihyeh Asher Ihyeh,” I am what/that I am. I am all of existence.

It should be no surprise that Moses did not understand this. Moses essentially responded in word and action by accepting this as a proper name in the sense of “The God of our Ancestors’ name is Bob.” Israelites, meet Bob. Bob, meet your people.

Then a few chapters later in Parashat Va’era this is made even more explicit. “Your ancestors knew me as El Shaddai, but you shall know me as the Eternal,” where “the Eternal” like HaShem and a variety of other traditions is a place holder for the ineffable four-letter name of God. But once again this is taken almost as “Your ancestors knew me as Jane, but you shall know me as Cindy.”

The passage is so much bigger! I suggest the expanded translation should be: “Your ancestors experienced me as the god with the power to nourish them and protect them within their houses, but I am not a finite deity as you have come to understand deity, I am not even an “I” rather the sum of all existence.” The ineffable name of God is a derivation of the Hebrew verb “to be.” There is no name here, merely a guidepost in our perceptions to have us challenge our finite thinking and encourage an expansive theology. (This is also why in narrative descriptions as well as translating biblical texts, I follow the suggestion of Moses Mendelssohn and use “The Eternal” instead of the more common “LORD.”

Ultimately, this means when I evoke “HaShem” in the teaching of a blessing, I am simultaneously invoking the challenge to allow our utterances of the various names of God to be shifted from “name” to “guide.” HaShem, literally “The Name,” pulls us back, if we move past specific cultural connotations, to the pivot from named idols to a relationship with the sum total of all processes and relationships in the universe. Because “The Name” cannot be a name, it is harder to get caught up in Moses’ polytheistic cognitive trap. We have a chance to be reminded to move beyond names when we evoke “the name” of the Eternal.