What's in a Name - Brakhot 7

With my rabbinical student hat on, I feel like there is a great passage here to be used at baby namings. The naming of Judah and Reuven illustrate the very Jewish idea that a name carries with it the essence of a person. The idea is based on a clever reading of a verse in Psalms: "Come and see the acts of God, who places destruction (שמות) throughout the land" (Psalms 46:9). Instead, Rabbi Eliezer reads שמות (with a vowel switch), meaning names. So, come and see the acts of God, who places names throughout the land," as if every name truly is God given and comes to fill a void in the world. While the proximity in the midrash of naming to destruction seems dark, perhaps consider a world in which there are no names - a sort of universalistic, death camp environment where nothing comes to identify each person as the unique soul he/she is. Oh, to know that God's hand in the world is to bless each child with the will and vision to live up to his/her name: Come and see the acts of God, who bestows names in the land.

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On a slightly different note, in the case of Judah, I was surprised to read the understanding of his name. Rashi helps in explaining that his name indicates Leah's thankfulness to God (having in it the roots for "thanks" and for "God") because of the fact that Leah was thankful for the conception and birth of Judah. But, she had had three sons already before Judah. And NOW, on the fourth, she decides to thank God!? As Rashi explains it, she even says "this time, I will thank God." No wonder Rachel felt so desperate for a child. Not only was her sister much more fertile than she, but to not offer thanks until the fourth one in, and yet Rachel would have been thankful for the very first child.