By Rabbi Carl M. Perkins:

What’s In a Name?

Yom Kippur 2002 (5763)

Occasionally, people have asked me how I happen to have gotten my name. “After all,” they hint, “it doesn’t sound particularly Jewish!”

The fact is, it’s no more, and no less, Jewish than any other name that a Jew might have, whether it may “sound Jewish” or not.

In my case, Perkins has not been in the family for very long. Pertsofsky is the original surname of my grandfather and his family. When he and his brothers and sisters left Russia in the first decade of the 20th century, they traveled first to England, where several of them settled. It was there that they changed the name to Perkins, which is a perfectly respectable name in England.

As for my first name—well, my Hebrew name is “Yehezkel” (“Hatzkel” in Yiddish). When I was a child, I once asked how I happened to receive that name. I was told, vaguely, that one of my ancestors—maybe it was my great-grandfather, maybe someone else – had been named Yehezkel. Several older cousins had also been named after him. Since my parents wanted me to have an English name as well, which bore some sound connection with Hatzkel, and the names Charles and Kenneth and, on the other side of the Atlantic, Archie, were already taken, they gave me the name Carl.

I am relating this, not in order to convince anyone that I have Jewish ancestry, but just to make the point that, my entire life, I’ve borne a name—as do many of us who are from Ashkenazic families—of an ancestor -- in my case, Yehezkel Pertsofsky—whom I haven’t known much about, and of whom I hadn’t thought very much – until about a year ago.

Last August, I got an e-mail from a woman living in England named Jean Perkin. She introduced herself to me as a relative: her late husband had been my grandfather’s nephew. She was writing because she was interested in exploring the family tree. We exchanged letters and pictures. She confirmed to me the name of the town in Russia (now, Belarus) from which my grandfather and his family had come: Chvonik or Khoiniki, and gave me some information about this relative and that one.

This piqued my interest: I began to wonder: was there any trace left that my grandfather had indeed lived in Khoiniki? So one afternoon, I sat down at my computer and began to move from site to site on the internet. Eventually, I keyed “Perstofsky” and “Khoiniki” into the genealogical search engine I was using. My browser gave me a website. It was a listing of those registered to vote in the area of Minsk, which is now the capital of Belarus, in the 1906 election to the Russian Duma, the Russian Parliament. Sure enough, there were 3 or 4 Perstofskys from the town of Khoiniki who were registered to vote in that election.

Unfortunately, my grandfather’s name was not on the list. But as I stared at the list, it dawned on me that my name was on that list. There it was: Yehezkel Perstofsky, the man after whom I was named, the man whose name I bear, from the town of Khoinik, registered to vote in the 1906 election. He really had existed, and I was staring at proof of that.

It was an odd feeling. I obviously had never met and didn’t know the man, and I still don’t know much about him today. But people in my family obviously cared enough about him to preserve his name and thereby to remember him. And, although I’d like to learn more, this somehow vindicated their choice.

Among Ashkenazi Jews, there is a strong tendency to name children after the deceased. (Sephardim, in contrast, generally name a child after a living relative.) What is this all about? What does it accomplish?

A friend of a friend, a woman by the name of Rena Draiman, made aliyah a number of years ago. After many years of trying to have a child, barukh ha-shem—“Thank God”—she became pregnant. She was overjoyed. And as the due date for the birth of her son approached, about six months ago, she and her husband spent a lot of time thinking about the name they would bestow upon him. She didn’t have a particular relative in mind after whom to name him; instead she wanted somehow, through his name, to convey her appreciation of the gift of life. There are several such names in Hebrew, such as, “Netanel”—“God has given,” “Matityahu” or “Mathew,” which means the same thing, that come to mind.

During this time, as I’m sure we all recall, there was a series of terrible attacks in Israel. In one of them, a group of soldiers was ambushed in the town of Jenin, and were killed. As is always the case in Israel, the next day, the newspapers published the names of those killed. One of those names caught her eye: St. Sgt. Matanyah Robinson. Matanyah! Literally, “God’s gift!” Immediately, she and her husband realized that this was the right name, and so that’s what they decided to name their son.

She then decided to contact Matanyah Robinson’s parents. She soon learned that they, too, were American olim, immigrants from America. She also learned that Sergeant Matanyah’s mother’s name was none other than Rina, her own name.

At last word, she’s planning to bring her Matanyah to meet the parents of the other Matanyah.

What is going on here?

When a loved one’s name is carried on, it suggests somehow that the essence of the person is also being kept alive. This can be a source of comfort and consolation. It can also be a self-fulfilling prophecy, for when people know that someone is named for someone else, they can sometimes try to explain why, and thereby keep alive that person’s memory.

A friend of mine told me a wonderful story. Some members of her family were sitting around, talking about an older acquaintance—let’s call him Saul Cohen—who had died several years before. Someone asked, “How many years has it been since Saul Cohen died?” At that point, a little child, who’d been sitting quietly, playing, piped up, “Saul Cohen’s not dead! Saul Cohen’s in my class!” It momentarily shocked everyone, but, sure enough, this child was in class with a little boy who’d been named for the older Saul Cohen.

We can’t always, we don’t always name people after those who’ve passed away, but there are other ways to remember the dead, the most characteristically Jewish of which is by giving tsedakah. As it is written, “u’tsedakah tatzil mi-mavet”—“Righteousness can save one from death.” (Proverbs 11:4) We can keep our loved ones alive, as it were, through acts of lovingkindness, and through contributions, in their memory. We can help assure that the name by which our loved one was known remains a shem tov, a good name. And we can recite prayers in their memory.

Why do we recite Yizkor on Yom Kippur? Why, in the middle of a day devoted to prayer, confession, reflection, do we pause to remember our dead? One could readily understand if we didn’t do that. One might say: let’s focus on the future, not the past! Let’s concentrate on improving our behavior and bringing good into the world without regard to whatever losses we may have experienced.

And yet we don’t do that. Why?

Let me suggest a number of reasons.

First, reflecting on loss is a reminder of our own mortality, which is critical for engaging in teshuvah. Recognizing that we won’t live forever gives urgency to the demand that we repent now.

Second, we can learn from lives well lived—and from those not so well lived! We only have one life to live, but we can reflect on the lives of those we’ve known and loved. This can help us better understand the choices before us; better distinguish between good choices and bad ones; and better appreciate their respective consequences.

Third, when we reflect on the lives of those who have influenced us—particularly our parents, but this is also true with respect to any who have influenced us—we can better understand ourselves. After all, each of us was once a child. Those who raised us imparted something to us. We needn’t get into the nature-nurture debate. The fact is, we’ve inherited, from those who came before us, from those who raised us and from those who raised them, parts of ourselves. The better we understand those parts, the better we are able to understand the impediments to teshuvah within us, as well as the resources we can draw strength from, to do the right thing.

Fourth, we pause and reflect upon our losses because, when one has suffered a loss, death becomes a constant companion. It is always with us. Who we are is defined by whom we’ve loved and whom we’ve lost. To ignore that would not be real.

There’s one final reason why we do this. It’s similar to the reason why we gather together in such large numbers on these holy days.

The work we are here to do is difficult. To examine the self—“it ain’t easy.” It requires us to expose ourselves, which is rarely comfortable. We must confront our weaknesses, our flaws. We confess our sins.

It brings us some measure of strength to do this in the presence of others. That may be the reason that we typically daven in such large groups on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. But how open are we, really, with those around us? How comfortable are we revealing to others around us what’s flawed within us?

Remembering our losses on this day is a reminder that we are not alone. We are here not only in the presence of those who are physically around us, but also those who are psychically around us. Our relatives and friends who’ve died—they always are with us, but we evoke their presence now, because we need it. We’re not in our offices, we’re not in our cars; we’re in shul, where it is neither embarrassing nor dangerous to commune with our loved ones.

Drawing strength from our ancestors has long been a Jewish practice. There is a concept called z’chut avot—the merit of our ancestors—that suggests that somehow we are sustained and strengthened by the good deeds that our ancestors once performed. That’s why we so often invoke the patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Whatever our genetic links to them might be, they are our spiritual ancestors.

Last week, there was an extraordinary picture in the New York Times (September 7, 2002, p. A9). It is a picture taken at Cipriani, a fashionable Midtown restaurant. In it are over a dozen women, several more in the background, each holding a baby. For the most part, the women are smiling. They look youthful and healthy. It looks like a large mother’s group. There are several black women, one woman of East Asian ancestry, another woman cloaked in what looks like a burka.

The women share something in common: each of them has an infant. They share something else, something terrible, in common: Each of their husbands was killed a year ago on September 11. Each of them had been pregnant at the time, and each of them gave birth to a healthy baby some time thereafter. The picture was taken at a baby shower that a national women’s organization sponsored for them.

That picture reminds us of the mingled feelings we have as we prepare to recite Yizkor.

On the one hand, there is pain and sadness. There is a sense of loss, sometimes very strongly felt, no matter how much time has passed since we first experienced it.

There is also a realization—arising purely from the act of remembering—that time has marched on. We who are alive have had thoughts, feelings, experiences since the deaths of our loved ones. Think about those infants whose fathers never had the chance to meet them. Some of them are walking already!

Finally, there is hope. Through remembrance comes the hope that we, the living, can keep alive something precious in the lives of those whom we’ve loved and lost, something imperishable. Seeing that picture of those babies, thinking about Matanya, the baby boy in Israel who bears the name of that ambushed soldier—these bring us hope that those who’ve died can, indeed live on.

We are the living. Many of us will shortly be remembering our loved ones. May we appreciate the blessing of having known and loved them. May we gain strength to carry on in their absence. May the goodness that they brought into the world live on, and may we do our best to see that that happens.

May the memories of our loved ones remain a blessing. Amen.