Some years back, I led several tours to Israel for mixed
Jewish-Christian groups that usually turned out to be dominated numerically by
Christians. On one tour, we were in the
bus and just past a particularly tense moment – I think it had to do with
several of the group’s members not showing up on time for a departure from
Kibbutz Ein Gedi. It was also late in
the day, and we were all tired. There
was a cloud of conflict that had settled over the bus. Someone asked me to lead a song, and I
probably hurumphed the idea. So
they took over.
“I know!” a
Christian woman shouted out. “Let’s sing Jehovah Jirah!” And then, she turned to me and asked, “Rabbi,
do you know Jehovah Jireh?”
The name meant
nothing to me, but even more, the title didn’t sound at all like that of a song
I would know.
I knew the origins
of the word Jehovah. This is what
many Christians think we Jews call God.
When they talk about God and want to make a connection with us Jews and
our relationship with God, they sometimes use the name Jehovah as a
marker. I remembered how, in a high
school English class, we were reading the historical novel Johnny Tremaine, set
in the eighteenth century, and one of the characters kept using Jehovah as
a name for God. Perplexed because I’d
never heard it, I asked the teacher. She
was a lovely African-American lady, certainly a Christian. “Jehovah?” the teacher responded. “Why,
Donald, that’s what you Jews call God.”
Now the sweet lady happened not to be talking to a Jew from the most religious of
families. But still, I had served enough
‘punishment’ hours in synagogues and had never heard the name Jehovah uttered,
not once. So I wrote off the teacher’s response
to something beyond my comprehension and forgot it for a long time.
Fast forward to
Bible class in the second year of rabbinical school. It was one of those afternoon classes that
just seem to drag on forever, in large part because the professor was
not always the most compelling lecturer.
With my Stuttgart Bible open on the desk in front of me, I fought the
onset of sleep. My eyes clouded over,
and my head began to fill with questions as to why I hadn’t enrolled in law
school. Had I chosen that path, I
would then be in the second of three years of study, but since I’d
chosen to be a rabbi, I was in the second of five years. Oy!
So my eyesight
blurred and I began seeing the Hebrew words appear to swim around on the page
under my nose. And then, suddenly, I
focused on the Tetragrammon, the four-letter name of God that appeared on the
centre of the page we were studying. You
know, the name Yod-Hey-Vav-Hey. When
it appears in a printed Bible or Siddur, it is accompanied by the vowels
for the word Adonai. Of course,
that is an acknowledgement that, instead of trying to pronounce God’s
four-letter name, we say Adonai, meaning ‘my Lord’ as a substitute. So the three vowels of Adonai, ‘uh-o-ah’
are superimposed over the consonants Yod-Hey-Vav-Hey. But in my torpor that day, I had an
instant of clarity. The vowels uh-o-ah
combined with Yod-Hey-Vav-Hey yield Yehovah. Seeing that clearly for the first time, I
uttered in a low voice: Ye-ho-vah.
“Just a minute,” the
teacher said, interrupting the student who had been reading and explaining. “I
think Mr Levy is having an epiphany of some kind.” Dr Steve Kaufman, of blessed memory, turned
to me. “Mr Levy, would you like to share your insight with the class?”
“Ye-ho-vah,” I
said, too excited to be embarrassed. “If
you try to pronounce Yod-Hey-Vav-Hey with the vowels uh-o-ah, it
comes out Ye-ho-vah. In medieval English,
as in modern German, the ‘J’ is pronounced ‘Y.’ But because today we see a ‘J’ and
pronounce it ‘J,’ that’s where Jehovah comes from.”
“Very good, Mr Levy,”
Dr Kaufman said somewhat sarcastically. “For that, I won’t fail you for falling
asleep in my class. The medieval
Christians saw an early Jewish manuscript with that vowelling for the
Tetragrammon, and they assumed that Jews call God, Yehovah.”
“Why didn’t they
just ask their Jewish neighbours?” I asked.
“That,” the teacher
said, “is one of life’s great mysteries.
Why do we usually waste time and effort speculating rather than
ask directly?”
Indeed, why do we
waste time and effort speculating on what other people think, rather than just
ask them? It is one of the great
mysteries of life. Okay, in truth it isn’t
much of a mystery. But it is a
bit complex.
Part of why we don’t
just ask them, is that we’re embarrassed. Somebody will tell us something, and we’re a
bit perplexed and don’t understand where he or she is coming from. But we’re too embarrassed to ask for a
clarification. So instead we often let
the opportunity pass. And then we turn afterwards
to someone else who was there, and we discuss what the speaker might have
meant. And in so doing, we almost never
arrive at the full understanding that we would have achieved, had we just
asked. Because we simply cannot avoid
superimposing our own attitudes and preconceived notions, over what the speaker
said. So, out of a mild embarrassment
over not getting it from the start, we often end up with a complete
mis-understanding. But then the problem
is that, we’re now convinced that we now truly understand the
speaker’s intent. So, we’re unlikely to
be convinced otherwise, even if we subsequently ask the original speaker.
But in truth, this
embarrassment is only a small part of why we do this. A bigger part is that speculating, rather
than just asking, makes us feel much more powerful. Think about it. If I can determine through my
speculations what someone meant in saying something, then I suddenly have the
power to in effect determine what someone else is saying. Look, we don’t do this deliberately, in a way
that we can articulate that it’s what we’re doing. But let me challenge you. The next time you catch yourself doing this
very thing, think about what I’ve said tonight.
And reflect honestly on why you didn’t just ask the person what they
meant. This, instead of discussing behind
the person’s back what he or she might have meant. And if you truly are honest, you are
likely to realise that doing it this way has ‘empowered’ you to determine what
the person ‘really’ said. And
thereby, to fit the person’s words into your own agenda of what you wanted his
or her words to mean.
As I said, we do it
all the time. Without thinking about it. But whatever our intent or lack thereof, the
result is the same. We end up not
communicating clearly. And that results
in interpersonal tensions that are completely avoidable. If only we had just asked.
So the well-meaning
Christian lady on the bus asked me if I knew the song Jehovah Jireh. Choosing not to respond immediately, I took
a moment to reflect. And then I realised
that Jehovah Jireh is Adonai Yir’eh.
Adonai will see. It’s what
Abraham called the place where he almost sacrificed Isaac, his son. At the last moment, an angel called out to
him and told him to stop and not kill his son.
Holding his arm still, Abraham was startled by a movement in an adjacent
thicket, and he saw a ram. So he quickly
took the ram and slaughtered it in place of his son. Because he was thankful to God for not
requiring him to go through with the sacrifice.
Because he felt that God had seen his, Abraham’s, devotion, and honoured
it by calling off the sacrifice. Adonai
Yir’eh. Adonai will see.
“I know the words
to Jehovah Jireh,” I told the lady in the bus. “But I’m not sure of the
tune. So why don’t you lead it?” And she did.
And all the Christians sang along.
And it didn’t resemble any Torah-based song I’d ever heard. But never mind. They sang out their devotion to the God of
Israel. Even if they didn’t quite get
His Name right. So what? Adonai isn’t really His Name,
either.
But had the medieval
Christians simply asked their Jewish neighbours about the name of God that
appeared in their Bibles, then centuries of mis-understanding would not have
ensued. And maybe those Christians would
have attained some deeper understanding about the Jewish conception of God. And maybe it would have helped them in their
approach to that God.
Directness. Just asking the source. Avoiding the behind-the-back speculation. It’s a powerful idea whose implementation is
long overdue. But the very minute we
internalise this and begin working at doing better, we benefit. Think about it. And learn to just ask. Get it from the source. Shabbat shalom.
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