G-d’s Name 

By: Yochanan Gordon 

Singer-songwriter Gabe Bauman wrote a song that went viral about G-d knowing each of our names and feeling each of our pain. There is something deeply comforting about that idea. A name is more than a means of identification. Our name represents the place where our inner, private existence becomes accessible to someone outside of us. When someone calls our name, they are not merely identifying us. They are calling us. Perhaps that is why the idea of G-d knowing our names resonates so deeply. There are billions of people inhabiting this world, each carrying his or her own story, struggle, hopes, disappointments, and prayers. Yet before G-d, nobody is anonymous. He knows our name.

That thought came to mind as I reflected upon the unusual designation given to the four days between Yom Kippur and Sukkos. In Chassidic teachings, these four days are associated with the four letters of G-d’s ineffable Name, Yud-Hei-Vav-Hei. We have just emerged from Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year, and before entering the sukkah and taking the four species, there are four intervening days. G-d’s Name. But what does that mean? Throughout Selichos, which accompanied us through Elul and the Yamim Noraim, we repeatedly invoked those who came before us. There is a section in which we recall biblical personalities who called out to G-d and were answered. We invoke Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, Moshe, Aharon, David, and the other great souls whose prayers pierced the heavens. We are, in a sense, presenting names before G-d. Remember this person. Remember that person. Remember who we are and where we come from. And then something changes.

The language shifts into Aramaic, a language which Chazal tell us the ministering angels do not understand. At that point we are no longer relying upon the normal channels through which prayer ascends. We are reaching toward a place beyond intermediaries, beyond descriptions, and ultimately beyond names. Because as important as a name is, the essence of a person precedes his name. And the same is true, so to speak, Above. G-d has many Names. Each describes a particular manner in which He relates to creation. But G-d Himself is beyond every Name by which we can call Him. Yom Kippur is the day when a Jew reaches that place. We spend an entire year living through our names—through our personalities, accomplishments, failures, identities, and circumstances. Then comes Yom Kippur, and beneath all those layers we discover the part of ourselves that cannot become disconnected from G-d. It is the essence of the Jew encountering the Essence of G-d.

But then Yom Kippur ends. And suddenly the next four days are called G-d’s Name. Why, immediately after reaching beyond names, do we return specifically to the Name? Perhaps because the purpose was never to remain beyond the world. The purpose of Yom Kippur is to return to the world differently. And a thought occurred to me. Perhaps after spending Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur focused almost entirely upon our return to G-d, these four days contain, in an extraordinarily delicate sense, something of G-d’s return to us. On Rosh Hashanah He sits in judgment. On Yom Kippur the judgment reaches its culmination. We stand before Him and plead for life, forgiveness, blessing, children, health, livelihood, peace, and redemption. We repent. But then, as Yom Kippur recedes, we encounter four days that bear His Name. Could it be that there is something here that resembles, so to speak, a Divine teshuvah? The formulation sounds audacious, but the concept that G-d Himself seeks atonement is already found in the words of Chazal. The Gemara relates that when G-d diminished the moon after it protested that two kings could not share one crown, He instructed that a sin-offering be brought on Rosh Chodesh and said, “Bring an atonement for Me for having diminished the moon.” Obviously, these words cannot be understood in their ordinary human sense. G-d does not sin or require forgiveness as we do. But Chazal nevertheless chose the language of atonement. There is something about the diminishment of the moon that G-d Himself asks us to repair. And the moon is not incidental to this discussion. The moon represents Knesses Yisrael. It represents malchus, the final sefirah, the recipient of all that precedes it. And malchus is associated with the final hei of G-d’s four-letter Name. Yud. Hei. Vav. Hei. The final hei is where the Divine flow finally enters the created world. It is also the letter that is most vulnerable, as it were, to exile. Perhaps that gives us a deeper way of understanding what exile actually is. Golus is not merely that the Jewish people were driven from their land. It is not merely persecution, displacement, or concealment. Golus is a Name that has come apart. G-d’s unity remains absolute, of course. Nothing can alter the Divine reality. But from the perspective of our experience, the letters no longer appear together. Heaven and earth seem disconnected. G-dliness and physicality appear to inhabit different worlds. The Creator seems removed from His creation. And it is within that apparent separation that sin becomes possible. If G-d’s unity were completely visible—if the Name were experienced in its wholeness—how could a person knowingly act against His will? Sin requires concealment. Golus requires concealment. Both exist within the space created by the apparent fragmentation of the Divine Name.

And then comes Sukkos. We emerge from Yom Kippur and spend four days preparing G-d’s Name. We build a sukkah. We search for an esrog. We inspect our lulavim and hadassim and aravos. And then, on the first morning of Sukkos, we take four seemingly unrelated species and bring them together. The four species correspond to the four letters of G-d’s Name. There is a remarkable episode recorded by the great early Kabbalist Rabbi Menachem Recanati. He relates that in a dream he became aware of people who were separating the Divine unity. Upon further reflection, he discovered that their practice was to hold the esrog apart from the other three species. The esrog corresponds to the final hei. They had all four minim. Nothing was missing. And yet G-d’s Name was divided. That detail is extraordinary. You can possess every letter and still not have the Name. You can have the yud, the hei, the vav, and the final hei, but if they remain separate, something fundamental is absent. Unity is not merely possessing all the pieces. Unity is bringing them together. Perhaps that is why these four days following Yom Kippur are so important. On Yom Kippur we reached a place beyond names. For one day there was no eating, no drinking, almost no physical life at all. Dressed in white, we resembled angels. Five times we stood in prayer, climbing higher and higher until Neilah, when everything else disappeared. But G-d does not desire a world of permanent Neilah. He wants a sukkah. He wants food inside a sukkah. He wants wine over which Kiddush is recited. He wants a lulav made from a palm tree, myrtle branches, willows growing beside the river, and an esrog that grew from the earth. He wants His Name assembled down here. That may be the movement from Yom Kippur to Sukkos. Yom Kippur reveals the place where neither our failures nor even our names can separate us from G-d. The four days that follow begin rebuilding His Name. And Sukkos brings the letters together.

There is something profoundly moving about the reciprocity of it all. For forty days from Rosh Chodesh Elul through Yom Kippur, we return to Him. And then, in the days following Yom Kippur, He returns to us. Not because G-d ever truly left, but because the distance that characterized our experience is being repaired. Our teshuvah reveals who we really are. His “teshuvah,” if we may borrow the expression, reveals who He really is—not a distant King interested primarily in sitting in judgment, but a Father who desires to dwell together with His children. And perhaps this is the deepest meaning of G-d’s Name. A name exists so that another can call you. G-d, in His Essence, requires no name. A name only becomes meaningful because there is someone else who wishes to address Him. In other words, G-d’s Name itself testifies to His desire for relationship. We spent the Yamim Noraim calling His Name. Now He gives us His Name to carry. Yud. Hei. Vav. Hei. Four days. Four species. Four letters waiting to become one.

And the culmination of history itself is described by the prophet Zechariah in precisely these terms: “On that day, G-d will be One and His Name will be One.” Not that G-d will someday become One. He is One now and always has been. What changes is His Name. The world will finally reflect the unity that was always true. The moon will be restored. The final hei will return to its place. The scattered Jewish people will return home. Heaven and earth will cease appearing as competing realities. The physical world will reveal the G-dliness that has always sustained it. And perhaps that is why, after the intensity of Yom Kippur, we are given these quiet four days. We have spent weeks asking G-d to remember our names. Now we turn our attention to His. Because redemption is not only the story of a people finally returning to G-d. It is the story of G-d’s Name finally becoming whole in His world. We know that He knows our names. The question now is whether we can help the world know His. 

Yochanan Gordon can be reached at [email protected]. Read more of Yochanan’s articles at 5TJT.com.