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“Shinui Shem” Change Your Name, Change Your Luck
AVERTING DEATH
When I was 15 years old, my mother died. She was 46. At that time, my aunt told me, “your grandmother and great grandmother also died at age 46, so you’d better watch out when you’re 46.” I always lived in fear of being 46. My panic started when I turned 45. It was then that a scholar/friend educated me about an old Jewish custom. She told me, “Years ago, people used to change their name to fool the Angel of Death.”
A NEW HEBREW NAME
May God who blessed our ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah, bless Amy Dara Hochberg who has come for an aliya with reverence for God and respect for the Torah and Shabbat and the Festival. Our holy rabbis said that three things cause a person’s destiny to change, one of them being the change of the person’s name. We have fulfilled what they said and her name has been changed. Her name among the people Israel will now be Ahuvah Nirah bat Baruch v’Shoshana. May the Holy One bless her and all of her family and may God send blessing and success in her every endeavor, together with our fellow Jews everywhere. And let us say: Amen.
CREATING DISTANCE FROM ABUSIVE PARENTS
Several women have said that they wanted to change their names in order to separate themselves from their parents. In situations where children have been abused, many choose to later to be called for an aliya with a new Hebrew name which includes spiritual symbolic parents.
AFTER DIVORCE
Separating from my husband was a new stage of life—and I had a very hard time using his last name. When I reverted back to my maiden name I felt that the pieces of the puzzle were fitting together again.
Who Are We?
The articles in this special section:A Name in the Closet
by Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz
Each of Us Has a Name
poetry by Zelda
Wave of Emotion
by Rabbi Leila Gal Berner
A Dad’s Choice
by Seena Candy Sweet
One Woman, 2 Marriages, 3 Cultures, 4 Names
by Karen Alkalay-Gut
Out of the Flames
by Phyllis Pacheco
The Power of Name
by Esther Gerstenfeld Radick
Feminist Son, Angry Mom
by Ann Klaff Lontein
Making up our Shared Name
by Rabbi Zeise Wild Wolf
The Pronunciation of My Name
by Rachel S. Havrelock
The Wisdom of Change
by Sophia Batsheva Rosenberg
Wacky Macky
by Maxine Silverman
A Bitter Blow
by Mara Benjamin
I Love My Name
by Troim Katz-Blacker Handler
Sylvia Meister, Sylvia Roth, Sylvia Shopira and I, Sylvia Rosner
by Sylvia Rothchild
Jew by Choice, Name by Choice
by Kiera Aviya Koester