Ehrensperger Report 2003
(November 15, 2003)
Submitted by Prof. Aaron Demsky
Director, The Project for the Study of Jewish
Names
Dept. of Jewish History, Bar-Ilan University,
Ramat-Gan, Israel 52900
Tel. 972-2-993-1878
Fax 972-2-9932-208
During this past academic year there have
been various activities in the study of Jewish names, which fall into three
categories - classes & lectures; publications; conferences.
Classes and lectures
In the academic year of 2002/2003, I gave,
for the second time, a graduate seminar in the Department of Jewish History on
Jewish Names through the Generations. There were twenty registered
students. The first semester includes
my introduction to the field of Jewish onomastics. In addition there were seven
invited lectures by Ms. Malkah Birnboim (“Contemporary Naming Patterns among
Secular and Religious Jews in Israel”); Dr Samuel Cooper (“An Anthropological
View on Onomastics”); Prof Yosi Katz (“Placenames in Modern Israel”): Prof
Naftali Kadmon (“Principles of Toponymy”); Dr. Avshalom Kor (“Categories of
Jewish Family Names”); Prof Shlomo Spitzer (“Correct Spelling of Names on
Jewish Bills of Divorce”); Prof Benjamin Beit Halahmi, “Psychological Factors
in Name giving Practices in Modern Israel”.
During the second semester the students presented their own papers and
research.
Publications
Aaron Demsky (ed.), These Are The Names -Studies in Jewish
Onomastics Vol. 4 (Ramat-Gan, Israel); publication date set for December
2003.
This volume of These Are The Names, honors our eminent
colleague Prof. Edwin D. Lawson on the occasion of his eightieth birthday.
According to the format of the earlier volumes, this anthology
of twelve essays is divided into an English section, containing 7 articles and
a Hebrew section of 5 papers. Each article is abstracted in the opposite
language. There are also three indices in Hebrew, Latin and Cyrillic alphabets
of names studied in these papers. The articles reflect the interdisciplinary
nature of the subject.
CONTENTS
Introduction
Prof Aaron Demsky
Appreciation
of E.D. Lawson
Prof Donald Lance, Geography, University of Missouri,
Columbia, Missouri: “Ed Lawson - The Man and the Scholar”
Prof Edward Callary, English, Northern Illinois University:
“Ed Lawson’s Contribution to Onomastics”
Prof Andre Lapierre, Linguistics,
Ottawa, Canada: “Ed Lawson and ICOS”
English Section:
Dr
Alexandre Beider, Paris, France:
“Methodological Principles for Determining Etymologies of Ashkenazic
Given Names”
Prof Rita Bredtfeld, Economics, Stockholm, Sweden: “Naming
Customs among Swedish Jews as an Indication of Assimilation”
Prof Aaron Demsky, Jewish History, Bar-Ilan University: “Some
Reflections on the Names of the Jews of Kaifeng, China”
Prof Donald Lance, Geography, University of Missouri:
“Biblical Names in the Toponymy of Missouri”
Prof Stanley Lieberson, Sociology,
Harvard University: “Jewish Names and the Names of the Jews”
Dr Boris Kotlerman, Hebrew
Literature/Yiddish, Bar-Ilan University: “Jewish Names on the Map of
Birobidjan”
Dr Chana Tolmas: “The Laqab
of Bucharan Jews”
An Annotated Bibliography of Jewish Names (160pp., over 600
items) prepared by Prof Edwin D.
Lawson, Psychology, Fredonia College, NY:
Hebrew Section
Dr Leah Bornstein-Makovetzky, Jewish History, Bar-Ilan
University: ‘Personal Names of Jews of Saloniki-The Latter Generations”
Ms Elisheva HaCohen, Hebrew
Literature, Bar-Ilan University: “The Genre of Name Riddles in the Poetry of
Anatoli bar Yosef”
Dr Tal Ilan, Schecter School of
Jewish Studies, Jerusalem: ”Rabbi Yosi the Student of Rabbi Akiva and Yosi ben
Halafta”
Dr Admiel Kosman, Talmud, Bar-Ilan
University: “Gender Roles in the Names in the Story of Mar Uqba”
Prof Yosef Rivlin, Talmud, Bar-Ilan
University: “Midrashic Derivations in Biblical Names according to Rabbi Elijah
of Vilna”
Indices and Abstracts
The first volume of These Are the
Names (Ramat-Gan, 1997) has been reprinted after selling out some 700
copies. Anyone interested in purchasing this series of four volumes or a single
volume should contact press@mail.biu.ac.il
or me.
Conferences
In recognition of the academic standard of
the subject of onomastics, we have been invited to create a program for six sessions
(one day) on Jewish names at the forthcoming 14th Congress of Jewish
Studies to take place in August 2005 at the Hebrew University, Mount Scopus
Jerusalem, Israel. If you would like to present a paper on a related topic,
please contact me as soon as possible.
The 6th International Conference on Jewish
Names was held June 11, 2003 at Bar-Ilan University. More than 100 people
attended each of the sessions. The conference received a lot of favorable media
coverage. I’m including the program and abstracts of the lectures.
09:00 – Greetings: Yehoshua Schwartz, Dean, Faculty of Jewish
Studies
Opening Session.
Chair: Aaron Demsky,
Head, The Project for the Study of Jewish Names
09:10 – 09:30 Bret
Stephens, “The Name of the War”
First Session. Chair: Shmuel Vargon
09:30 – 09:50 David Golinkin, “When are Baby Girls
Named?”
09:50 – 10:10 Orli
Meron, “Names, Demography and Business: Jewish Firms from Saloniki 1912-1921”
10:10 – 10:30 Idan Breier, “The Personal Name `Akhbar in
the Bible and the Ancient Near East”
10:30 – 10:50 Tal Ilan, “The Name ‘Shalom’ in Antiquity”
Second Session. Chair: Gershon Bacon
11:10 – 11:30 Moti
Zalkin, “Kinship and Name: The Names of Lithuanian Jews in the Light of the Book Ir Vilna”
11:30 – 11:50 Tamar Shalmon-Mack, “Names of Polish Jews in Documents of Divorce”
11:50 – 12:20
Hannah Tolmas, “Family Names of the Bucharan Jews”
12:20 – 12:40
Edwin D. Lawson, “The Mountain (Gorski) Jews of Azerbaijan: Their 20th Century Naming Patterns”
13:00 – 14:30 Lunch
Third
Session. Chair: Yoel Elitzur
14:40 – 15:00 Dwan
Shipley, “Conquest Influences on Two Toponomastic Regions: Israel and Normandy,
France”
15:00 – 15:20 Boris
Kotlerman, “Place
Names in the ‘Poland Stories’ of S.Y. Agnon”
Fourth
Session. Chair: Refael Yankelevitch
15:30 – 15:50 Aharon
Gaimani, “Priestly Families and Their Lineage”
15:50 – 16:10 Amos Dodi,
“Vocalizing Biblical
Personal Names in the 15th Century Spanish Translations”
16:10 – 16:30 Efrat
Habas, “Gamala -A Jewish
Personal Name?”
16:30 – 16:50 Haggai Harif,
“Hodoroff became Hod, Stalmach became Peled: The Policy of Hebraiziation of
Surnames in Israeli Sports”
Fifth
Session. Chair: Emmanuel Friedheim
17:10 – 17:30 Meir
Bar-Ilan, “Names
and Numerology”
17:30 – 17:50 Menachem Katz,
“Creating a Data
Base of People Mentioned in Rabbinic Literature”
17:50
– 18:10 Yosef Rivlin, “Cabbalistic Limitations in Name-giving Practices”
Meir
Bar-Ilan: Names and Numerology
The aim of this study is to make a
preliminary review of several Hebrew names that convey a Numerological meaning,
that is names in relation to the symbolic meaning of numbers, from Biblical
Hebrew down to modern times. The study is divided into three parts: a) the
relationships between placenames and Numerology; b) the relationships between
personal-names and Numerology; c) the connection between Numerologist and
names.
A. In the Land of Israel there are several placenames that
bear numbers, from Biblical times until this very day, such as Beer-Sheba,
Qiryat-Arb‘a, Ba‘al Shalisha, and more. It is argued that these names bear
a numerical understanding of numbers, that is according the symbolic meaning
people saw in the numbers 4 and 7 respectively. Modern names, such as Qiryat-Shemona
exemplify that a number in a name has no numerical meaning, but rather it
conveys the memory of a specific number of people (or some other realistic
figure).
B. There are few personal-names in the Bible that bear
numbers, such as Sheba and Bat-Sheba. These names should be
interpreted according the numerological significance of the number 7. However,
a name like Sheshai might be derived from a foreign language so there is
no need to connect it to Numerology. Military units, from ancient times (such
as the Xth Legion) until this very day (like 101, 202, 707) bear
numbers, but it doesn’t look like modern name-givers thought about Numerology.
C. Modern Numerologists claim effectively concerning the
connection between Numerological value of one’s name and his fate. The earliest
Hebrew precedent of this kind of thinking appears in the Book of Asaph the
Physician, assuming to be written in the 6th century, though it
might be that the specific text is a later addendum to the original text.
Idan
Breier: The Personal Name ‘Akhbar’ in the Bible and the Ancient Near East
This lecture will deal with the name ‘Akhbar’,
i.e.’Mouse’ as a first name in the Bible and in the Ancient Near East. A
personal name books shows that within the non-theophoric name group, animal
names, is very significant. We can presume that the animals’ characteristics
have had the main influence on the decision of naming a child such a way.
Within the genre of animal names group there is a group of negative animal
names. The name ‘Mouse’ is one of those names. The name ‘Akhbar’ as a first
name, with its variations, appears in the Bible and in the north-west Semitic
epigraphic inscriptions. It also appears in cuneiform texts from Mesopotamia
beginning from the Old Babylonian period. This lecture will study also the
geographical and archaeological distribution of the name ‘Akhbar’, in the
literary works in Antiquity.
Amos Dodi:
Transcriptions of Hebrew Proper Nouns in a 15th-Century
Spanish Bible
Most
surviving medieval translations of the Bible into Romance languages were
prepared by Jews, working from the Masoretic Text (=MT). Most of the
manuscripts were written or transcribed (in the Latin alphabet) at the end of
the14th and first half of the 15th centuries. Some manuscripts show the
influence of the Vulgate, for example, in the order of books in the Bible and
the spelling of proper nouns.
Transcriptions
of proper nouns (of both places and persons) in Romance translations of the
Bible are of particular interest. In some manuscripts one finds a tendency to
transcribe names in accordance with the MT. Transcriptions of proper nouns in
manuscript Bible translations in which relatively many names are transcribed
into Latin letters according to the reading reflected by the MT imply certain
conclusions as to the pronunciation of Hebrew and Romance languages in
Christian Spain up to the 15th century.
However, the linguist studying phonological
aspects of Hebrew and Castilian in Christian Spain on the basis of texts from
Castilian in the Latin alphabet must grapple with several methodological problems.
Care must therefore be exercised in any attempt to determine pronunciation on
the basis of Latin transcriptions of proper nouns.
One of the translations of Jewish authorship is Ms I.j.3 in
the Escorial Library (=E3), published in a critical edition by M. Lazar. This
manuscript was written in the 15th century. We will discuss how
proper nouns in the book of Genesis are transcribed in it. The findings from
this document will be compared with those of the 15th-century Alba
Bible and, where necessary, with the Vulgate and the Septuagint.
Aharon
Gimani: Priestly
Families and Their Pedigrees
Priestly
families in Jewish communities usually bore the name Cohen which expressed
their religious status. There were also communities whose priests had
pedigrees. Some priestly families also changed the name Cohen to a similar
sounding name such as Kahana, Kogan, Cohenke, Kohnsky, Kaplan, Kaplansky. Still
others modified their names to hide their Jewish identity, such as in Germany,
where the name Kahn, meaning “boat” in German, was changed to Schiff, meaning
“ship”. In addition, some families denoted their priestly origins with an
acrostic names such as Katz (Cohen Tzedek) or Azulai (Isha Zona Wa-halala
Lo Yiqahu). In places where many priests dwelled, additional surnames
were added in order to distinguish among them.
On occasion there were
priests who, due to marriage to divorcees, had to relinquish their priestly
status. On the other hand, in isolated cases marriages to women forbidden to
priests were permitted by virtue of doubts in their priestly pedigree.
In this lecture I shall explore family names of
priests in various Jewish communities. Such an undertaking will aid our efforts
to assemble a list of families which are definitely considered to be priests.
In particular I will focus on the halachic aspects of the priestly pedigrees,
and will address issues such as whether the testimony of someone coming from
another locality and claiming to be a priest is to be accepted, and whether
someone bearing a family name referring to a priestly family is to be
considered a priest. I shall also address the halachic status of a priest who
marries any of the women forbidden to the priesthood, and shall cite cases of
priests who were permitted to marry divorcees, including a 17th
century controversy among scholars, as well as a relevant decision of the Great
Rabbinical Court in Jerusalem in our day.
David Golinkin: When Are Baby Girls Names?
Jewish boys are traditionally named at the brit. There is no universally accepted custom
regarding the naming of girls. Customs
include naming girls on the day of birth or on the next day when the Torah is read or on the Shabbat after the
birth or on the second Shabbat after the birth or one week after birth or one
month after birth. In this paper we
shall attempt to examine all of the customs and their explanations and to see
if any of them were influenced by non-Jewish customs.
Ephrat
Habas: ‘Gam(a)la’ – A Jewish Personal Name?
The
name "Gam(a)la" is recorded in Eretz Israel under the Romans, always
in the form "X (son) of Gam(a)la". It is widely assumed to be a
Hebrew name, apparently a diminuative form of Gamaliel, a Biblical name whose
relatively few occurrences seem to confirm it as Jewish. Under this assumption,
"Gam(a)la" would be a patronym in all its' surviving occurrences (in
a couple of inscriptions, Josephus' writings and references in the Talmudic
corpus).
This
paper examines this view and seeks to modify it as further data are taken into
account.
Haggai Harif: Hodoroff
became Hod, Stelmach became Peled: The Policy of Hebraiziation of Surnames in
Israeli Sports
“Every
person has a name” wrote the poetess Zelda in her famous song, but for many
years, Israel’s sportsmen each had two names: a foreign name and a Hebrew name.
The strict enforcement of Hebraizing the
names of sportsmen representing the Jewish Yishuv in Eretz-Israel during the
British Mandate, and later the independent State of Israel, was part of a much
wider trend. The Hebrew name was considered one of the identifying symbols of
Hebraism, and the Hebraizing of names was an important mechanism in the process
of assimilating new immigrants into Eretz-Israeli society. Ambassadors, senior
army officers and representatives of the State in international bodies were given
special instructions requiring a Hebrew name, though these were only partially
carried out.
The first evidence of the procedure of
changing foreign names of sportsmen to Hebrew names was in 1927. In the 1930’s
and ‘40’s, one of the main activists was Yosef Yekutieli, a member of “Maccabi”
and one of the heads of the Hebrew sports movement in Eretz-Israel, who
continuously preached the doctrine of “Hebrew names for Hebrew sportsmen”.
After the establishment of the State of
Israel, the formation of frameworks and consolidating patterns of statehood
were influenced by a strong national ideology, which left its imprint on every
aspect of life, including sport. The subject of Hebrew names for representative
sportsmen also arose, with greater intensity, when the Prime Minister’s Office
and the Foreign Office together with the leaders of the sports system required
names to be Hebraized.
In the first years of the State of Israel,
the instruction to call representative sportsmen by Hebrew names was generally
enforced. However, as fervent idealism died down, and it became legitimate for
the individual to act as he wished in many fields, with the passing of time
this procedure was no longer enforced. Since there was no legislation, not only
sportsmen but also senior officials of the State retained their foreign names.
The instructions for athletes travelling abroad to change their names often
remained only on paper. Only a handful of zealots, led by Yekutieli and
Immanuel Gil, a member of “Hapoel”, occasionally protested. The heads of the Israel Olympic committee
also stood firm: yes – to encourage sportsmen to Hebraize their names; no – to
forcing them to do so.
In the last three decades, Israeli sportsmen have
participated in international contests and projects, in particular the Olympic
Games, and many have retained their foreign names. The immigration of athletes
with foreign names from the former U.S.S.R, who have been absorbed into the
Israeli representative teams, strengthened the phenomenon and gave it legitimacy.
Today, no one would dream that representatives of the State could be forced to
have a Hebrew name in order to participate in sports contests.
Tal
Ilan: The
Name “Shalom” in Antiquity
The word shalom appears on a wide range of
Jewish inscriptions from antiquity. In this paper I will be following its
documentation in the Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaicarum published by
Frey between 1935 and 1952. I will show that in some areas, and at certain
times (Rome, Western Europe, Asia Minor and Syria in the late Roman-Byzantine
periods) the word was used a blessing to the deceased or the living, while in
Jerusalem during the Second Temple period it served as a woman’s name. In this paper I will point out the marginal
cases where the clear-cut distinction between name and blessing becomes
blurred. I will show that on principle, scholars preferred to the
interpretation of blessing across the board, although I believe that a more
nuanced approach, sometimes leaning toward the feminine name is to be
preferred.
Menachem Katz: Creating a Data Base of People Mentioned in
Rabbinic Literature
A
database of the names of men and women mentioned in the literature of the
Tannaitic and Amoraic periods has been created at Makhon Shiluvim of the
Yeshivat haKibbutz haDati in Ein Tzurim. In addition to the names, the data
base contains basic information on the figures including the time period and
generation, location, position, personal, familial or literary connections with
other figures, bibliographical references, and more. The project advanced in
two stages. The first stage was published a few years ago, as an experimental
internal edition. The second stage was developed with the support of and in
conjunction with the Center for Advanced Methodology in the Teaching of Mishnah
and Talmud at Bar-Ilan University, under the direction of Dr. Pinhas Hyman, and
will soon be added to the Internet site of the Center.
The past: No computerized database of people in
rabbinic literature has been created until now. The works of Aharon Hyman (Toledot
Tanaim veAmoraim, London, 1941) and of Hanoch Albeck (the sixth chapter of Mavo
LaTalmudim, Jerusalem, 1969 – who cites only Amoraim mentioned in the two
Talmuds) and certainly lists compiled by other authors do not satisfy the needs
of students and researchers.
The present: The database contains all of the
names, which appear in Rabbinic literature of the Mishnaic and Talmudic eras.
The names of scholars and non-scholars, men and women, Jews and non-Jews,
literary figures, family names, names of groups (such as the House of Shamai,
or Nehardaites), and names that are not necessarily linked to specific people
(for example, names found in contracts).
Various basic decisions had
to be made as the data base was being created, in order to provide the
researcher with a tool that was as up to date, precise and as complete as
possible. For example, which literary works were to be included in the data
base had to be established. We did not included names from later rabbinic
literature (such as Midreshei Tanhuma-Yelamdenu), late midrashim, anthologies,
or early mystical works, such as the Hekhalot literature. These works were
excluded because the names are often cited in a revised fashion, along with
additions that are not mentioned in the classical literature; including them
would have detracted from the precision of the database.
The primary importance of the
data base is that it: a) provides us with a complete list of all of the names
mentioned in Tannaitic and Amoraic literature, b) contains up to date research
findings, and c) is based on critical editions of the literature, on data banks
of Talmudic manuscripts and on facsimile editions of manuscripts.
I will briefly cite a number
of statistical findings drawn from the data base. We have found approximately
2300 images with names. Amongst them are 1750 scholars; approximately 330
Tannaim and 1450 Amoraim. Tannaim thus
comprise approximately 23% of the scholars mentioned in the literature. When
analyzing names of non-scholars, however, the findings are different. Out of 475 names, 260 of them are Tannaitic,
and only 215 are Amoraic; Tannaitic names thus comprise approximately 55% of
the names mentioned in the literature.
Other types of analyses which can be done include analyzing the names of
women mentioned in the literature, studying the differences between Eretz
Israel and Babylonia, etc.
The types of names found can
also be studied; which names are common and which rare to find, the language of
the names (Hebrew, Aramaic, Persian, Greek etc.), and which Biblical names are
found in these time periods – and the frequency of each of these names. For example; the names Moses, Abraham,
Aaron, David and Solomon are either never, or almost never found, while the
names Isaac, Ishmael, Jacob and Joseph are very common.
The future: Searching and analyzing this data base
will provide a number of variables which will contribute to the understanding
and study of Rabbinic literature in general, and will advance the study of
names in this time period as well. It
will also contribute to our understanding of the cultural, socio-economic,
geographic and other influences on the rabbinic period as well.
Plans
for future advancement and expansion of this database extend in two directions:
a) Creating additional databases, which would exist independently yet would be
linked to this one. These databases would encompass related literature, such as
Second Temple literature, early mystical literature, and late midrashim,
as well as names which appear in non-literary sources, such as various
archaeological findings. Additional
data based containing names of places and other types of names could be created
as well. b) The current database could
be subdivided into individual works and into clusters of works. For example, the names, which appear only in
the Toseftah, could be isolated, or, alternately, the names, which appear in
the Midreshei Halakhah of the school of R. Akiba or of R. Ishmael, could be
identified.
Boris Kotlerman: Place
Names in the “Poland Stories” of S.Y. Agnon
In 1916, an anthology of stories and articles
appeared in Berlin. It was written in German and called Das Buch von
Polnischen Juden, dedicated to the history of Polish Jewry. A young S. Y.
Agnon took part in the preparation of the book. He contributed four of his
stories translated into German. These works were the basis of a larger corpus,
which Agnon called “Poland. Tales from the Past” or “Poland-Legends”. The
corpus begins chronologically with the story of how the Ashkenazic Jews arrived
in Poland, about the end of the 11th century in the wake of the
First Crusade. According to Agnon, the choice of Poland as a place of refuge
was not accidental but rather that of divine choice
and attributes to the new home a degree of sanctity. This was emphasized in the
Hebrew etymology “The People of Israel said ‘Polin’, i.e. ‘Dwell here! For we
shall dwell here temporally, until we go up to the Land of Israel”.
There are other local Polish towns mentioned in
this corpus where legendary acts occurred, like Kawczin, Gnesen, Kruszewica,
etc. The acts are described according to a literary archetype rendering the
Kingdom of Poland a special Jewish aura.
Edwin D. Lawson, Farid Alakhbarov, Richard Sheil: The
Mountain (Gorski) Jews of Azerbaijan-Their 20th Century Naming Patterns
To determine what effects the political,
religious, social, and economic climate had on naming children, 50 Gorski
families (involving 388 individuals) were interviewed to identify naming
patterns over three generations. Most were from Guba, a community northwest
of Baku. Gorski Jews are proficient in three languages, Judeo-Tat, Azeri,
and Russian. Seventy percent speak Judeo-Tat as a first language.
Analysis of the first (given) names shows the language origin, meaning,
significance, and manner of bestowal. The given names fall into four
major categories: Beautiful, Popular, Religious, and Virtuous. Men had
more Religious names; Women, more Beautiful. About 27% of the males and
18% of the females were named after a relative. Male first names show
that 75% have clearly Jewish origins (usually the Bible); for females, the
percentage is 50%. The surname evaluation indicates that two-thirds of
the surnames have identifiably Jewish roots (mostly from the Bible). The
research concludes that the Mountain Jews by keeping alive their language and
culture were able to maintain and perpetuate their historical identity. Their
names demonstrate this.
Orly C. Meron :
Names, Demography and Business: Jewish Firms in Salonica (1912-1921)
An official,
undisclosed, 200-page report (1915) in German, compiled and issued by the
Museum of Commerce, by order of the Austro-Hungarian authorities
includes a list of firms operated in the province of Salonica during the last
decades of the Ottoman age. As the critical mass of the published firms
includes private firms (96%), it is a treasure containing a great variety of
family names as well as private names of various ethnic individuals: Jewish;
Turks; Greeks; Slavs; European and mixed-ethnic. Onomastic research through the
names of the firms enables an identification of the ethnic origin of the firms’
owners. We can thus trace the origins of Jewish businessmen operating in the
Macedonian Metropolis; Ethnic and inter-ethnic partnerships; Ethnic strategies
in business: ethnic concentration and vertical occupation of production and
commercial lines; Family firm as an ethnic mode of production; Marriage and
business; Family cartels, etc.
Sub-ethnic classification of the Jewish firms
enables us to take a simultaneous glimpse at the intra-ethnic structure of the
Jewish business world, and the impact of the geopolitical changes on it. What
were the characteristics of the Jewish, as well as of Jewish-non Jewish,
partnerships? Is there an acculturation
process towards European semi-colonialism through adoption of European names by
Jews? This onomastic research throws light on the entrepreneurship patterns of
the Jews in the most crowded Jewish Sephardi metropolis at that time.
Yosef Rivlin: Kabbalistic limitations in name-giving practices
Giving names to children was always
influenced by mystic factors. When we give a baby a name, which is connected to
a famous event, or after an honorable deceased relative we want to bring good
luck to the newly born.
The Halakhic literature was influenced by
Kabbalah considerations. The Kabbalistic scholars were involved in this sphere
of children's names. We find such limitations in Sefer Hasidim (Germany 13th
century), which, according to scholars was influenced by Kabbalah literature.
My paper will deal with some of these
limitations, as: 1. Are we allowed to give a name for someone of the opposite
sex, for instance, the name Baruch to a male baby in memory of a grandmother
who was called Beracha, and vice versa.
2. What do we know about
"selling" of a baby immediately after birth, and what name do we give
to the baby? 3. Could we give to a baby two names, each of them in memory of
two relatives? 4. Do we give a name of a person who died young?
In
this lecture I would like to examine each rule, its sources, its scope and its
aim.
Tamar
Salmon-Mack: Names in the Divorce Contracts of Polish Jewry
In divorce contracts (gittin)
problems arise concerning the accuracy of the names recorded. A close examination of the Polish Responsa
reveals decisions reached both in respect to the types of inexactitudes and to
the category of individuals concerned.
The rabbis needed to determine, in each case, whether a specific
inaccuracy would disqualify the bill of divorce. The questions were various.
For example, if the names themselves were correct, but the status of
Cohen or Levy was not properly designated would the contract be rendered null
and void? Would consideration of the
impossibility of attaining a revised get influence the decision to
uphold or reject the efficacy of a document in which an inexact detail has been
revealed in a name? What role did the
lack of knowledge of the names of the parents of the divorcing parties play in
deciding whether the divorce bill is kosher or not? Should the imminence of the husband's death facilitate leniency
in respect to slight inaccuracies regarding names? There was also a serious issue involved when it was suspected
that the husband might have deliberately distorted the names.
Another sort of
difficulty arises in the case of converts to Christianity; they would
ordinarily not be available to give a substitute get if the first was
disqualified. Here the rabbis tended to
be lenient in upholding slightly inaccurate documents. Also the names of apostates were treated in
a unique manner: gentile names were recorded in addition to the formal Hebrew
names. This was not only a question of
normative usage, but was intended to signal to the rabbis involved in the
divorce procedure that such a get needs special attention.
The different customs in Ashkenaz and Poland point
up certain social and cultural differences between these two Jewish
communities. In addition, from the
legal-halachic disputations regarding names on divorce bills we can learn the
nicknames commonly in use in each locale.
Dwan Shipley: Conquest Influences on Two Toponomastic Regions: Israel and
Normandy France
This paper compares the influence of
conquest in two toponymic systems: Israel and Normandy France. It examines the
influence of various historical occupations on place names of these two locales
from the perspective of Selwyn's concept, “landscapes of liberation and
imprisonment” (in Hirsch and O’Hanlon’s The Anthropology
of Landscape) in order to compare the influences of conquering peoples on two
particular toponymies.
First is Israel, which has a unique history
of occupations by many different powers over the centuries. Toponyms here
reflect the kinds of influences each invader exerted upon the toponymy of the
area, including the following. Were
names changed or did they remain the same? Were some changed and some not, and
why? How were specifics and generics treated? Were new names added? Were
different ideologies used in the naming process by each invading force? What
kinds of phonetic, morphological, and semantic linguistic processes were
involved?
Second is Normandy France, which has not
been incessantly invaded the way the region of Israel has, but those invasions,
which did occur, were very influential on its toponymy. For instance,
Viking-origin toponyms dominate one region of Normandy, but not other regions
where names of other origins prevail.
Through
comparisons this paper will show the similarities and contrasts of the
influences of conquering forces on the place naming of two unrelated geographical
areas of the world. This will situate
contemporary Israeli place names within the larger scholarly analytical
framework of comparative toponomastics, and thus will make a positive
contribution to the corpus of Jewish onomastics.
Bret
Stephens: Naming the War
The names we give to wars determines the way they
are perceived, prosecuted and remembered, for example "The War of
Secession" (aka The War Between the States, that is the US Civil War),
'The Great Patriotic War" (aka WWII). So what to call the current
Israeli-Palestinian conflict? The Palestinian name -- the intifada al-Aqsa
-- specifies a locus, a reference point, a method, a goal. The Israeli
name (when it isn't the intifada itself) is the matsav, or
"situation." It specifies nothing, betraying a broader Israeli
confusion over just what this conflict is all about, and boding ill for
Israel's chances to fight on its own terms.
Editors in particular have a duty to think
carefully about the names they employ. What criteria should be used? Is bias
avoidable? Is objectivity desirable? And what do the names now commonly used
here tell us about media coverage of the conflict in general?
Chana
Tolmas: FAMILY
NAMES OF THE BUKHARAN JEWS
This paper examines the nature of family
names, their sources derivation and their changes among Bukharan Jews. The
material was collected during field studies (including interviews, family
histories, family genealogies) undertaken in the Central Asian Republics
between 1986-1989 and in Israel between 1990-2003. The analysis is based on
oral material. Written material published in the former Soviet Union and Israel
was also consulted.
Bukharan
Jewish family names are of recent origin. They were formed in
the end of the 19th, the beginning of the 20th centuries when Russian - type
surnames were introduced in Central Asia. There are three main sources of
Bukharan Jewish family names origin:
laqabs - nicknames
(49,4%), personal names (45,1%), addressing forms (5,5%).
Bukharan-Jewish family names originate from different languages:
Tadjik (about 45% of all Bukharan Jewish family names), Uzbek (about 25%),
Arabic via Tadjik (about 15%), Hebrew (about 5%).
During
the mass immigration to Israel in 1990s some family names were changed. Changes
in Israel were aimed first of all at making a family name seem more Israeli.
Some Bukharan Jews have Hebraized their family names. Many
Bukharan Jewish family names indicate aspects of the contemporary Bukharan Jewish reality, like those of the
Sephardim and Ashkenasim they point to the places of origin, they tell us about Bukharan Jewish cultural life,
history, and, in particular their social status, occupation, and spoken
languages.
Motti
Zalkin: Kinship and Name: The Names of Lithuanian Jews in the Light of the Book
‘Ir Vilna’
The onomastic perspective is almost totally absent
from the historiography of East European Jewry. The main reason for was the
absence of a wide and detailed database of contemporary Jewish names. Hillel
Noah Maggid-Steinsneider (Vilna,1829-1903), a Jewish tombstones stonecutter and
an amateur historiographer, dedicated his life to the research of the history
of his hometown Jewish community. Throughout dozens of years he collected and
recorded thousands of names engraved on tombstones at the local Jewish
cemeteries. Maggid’s dream was to compose a three volumes communal biography,
based on this database, in order “to preserve the memory of this glorious
ancient community”. By 1900 he published the first volume of his book “Ir
Vilna”, a collective bio-bibliography of the local intellectual and rabbinical
elites. Recently, the manuscripts of the second volume were found and published
(M. Zalkin, Magnes Press, 2003), accompanied by indexes of names, places and
books mentioned in both volumes. The 5000 names’ index forms the first ever
database of 17th-19th centuries East European Jewish
names. Possible uses of different perspectives of this database will be
presented and discussed.