The Recurring Motif of Name-Changing in Jewish Literature

• In Event: Jewish name changing throughout the ages

Abstract

The motif of name-changing runs throughout Jewish literature, from the Bible, rabbinic text, philosophical discourse, to modern and contemporary Jewish literature. This paper will argue that there is a continuous onomastic literary tradition, in which traditional Jewish associations and attitudes towards names and name-changing are transmitted. I will first present a brief survey of name change plots in traditional Jewish texts. Starting with Avram, Sarai, and Yaakov’s name changes in Genesis, to the midrash that the children of Israel were redeemed from Egypt in part because they did not change their names, we will examine the thematic association between Jewish names, communal identity, and collective Jewish continuity. We will then briefly view select rabbinic decrees and public discourses regarding the use of non-Jewish names from the Babylonian, European, and American diasporas, in order to gain perspective on what might be considered an ideal Jewish onomastic model.

The paper’s focus, however, is on modern Jewish literary texts, and specifically on the question of how modern name plots not only shed light on the socio-historical phenomenon of name changing and communal reactions towards the phenomenon, but on how they reflect and transmit traditional Jewish onomastic values. My central argument is that the modern Jewish story enacts a rabbinic survival impulse, serving as a medium for reconstituting community in an increasingly decentralized Jewish world. Name-changing stories in particular, ostensibly about rupture, demonstrate what literary scholar, David Roskies terms “a politics of rescue.” Reappropriating themes and attitudes about names from biblical, rabbinic, and folk culture, such stories serve as a repository of shared knowledge and reinforce values that have connected the Jewish individual to the community throughout Jewish history. Literary texts include: Sholem Aleichem's "The Street" and Motl, The Cantor’s Son; Sholem Abramovitch's The Wishing Ring; Leon Kobrin’s “Jenny’s Kol Nidre”; Jo Sinclair’s Wasteland ; Saul Bellow’s Seize the Day; Herman Wouk’s Inside/Outside; and selected American Jewish folktales.

Author

• Stephanie Ginensky, Kibbutzim College of Education & Talpiot Academic College