I
have a theory. Women need to have children in the middle of the night so that
the man loses a night of sleep- he has to suffer a little too. At two in the morning on the Sabbath, the
seventh night of Channukah, the contractions got real and it was time to go,
and fast. First, we needed our support
team ready, comprised of a mother and a labor coach. My IPHONE stood ready, unlocked already so as
to minimize Shabbat transgressions, and I made the calls. Next, we needed transportation.
Yussuf, an Arab driver from neighboring Abu Gosh had gotten a call before Shabbat
that we may need him. I called and a
drowsy, crackled voice picked up on the other end, ‘time to go’.
Thankfully, the rest of the labor
went painfully smooth, and by 5:49 AM, the baby came out at 3,78 Kg/ 8.13 lbs
and an Apgar score of 9. She had a tuft of black hair unlike Naomi who came out
like a cue ball, but there was a sibling resemblance outside the stark
difference in noses. The question now
was what to call her. A name is no small
thing in Jewish thought. The famous line
in the Talmud[1]
says, ‘the name causes the future’. The
word for name in Hebrew is shem/שם, which is the same word as sham/שם, which
means ‘there’. In other words, the name
gives the address for the destination of a person’s life.[2]
However, today we don’t have the
prophetic insight to know the precise destination of our children, so we either
name after relatives or try to find an idea for the child to aspire to. We took
an inspiration from the auspicious timing of the birth-Channukah.
Channukah is known for two
things- light and praise. The light is obvious, but where does the praise come
in? It is the only time of the year where we can transform a normal meal into a
mitzvah meal through songs of praise.
Even if we prepare a lavish meal that is beyond the norm and invite many
guests and family, there is no mitzvah unless it is accompanied by songs of
praise. On a deeper level, the word for
praise, הלל, also mean’s light[3], because praise reveals the
special nature of something. The idea of Channukah is to see how the miracle of
the oil and the miracle of the war were beyond nature, and a proper perspective initiates praise.
The first time that praise is found in
the Torah is by Sarah when she travels to Egypt, ‘…the Egyptians saw that the
woman was very beautiful. The officials
of Pharoh saw her and they praised her’.[4] It is clear from here, again, that praise is
associated with something out of the ordinary.[5] That is the main lesson we felt about this
child. It is easy to take for granted
how amazing life is. After one child a second can seem obvious. However, the
Talmud says differently in Sanhedrin 91a; birth is always a miracle: An emperor said to Rabban Gamaliel: ‘You maintain that
the dead will revive; but they turn to dust, and can dust come to life?
Thereupon his [the emperor's] daughter said to him [the Rabbi]: ‘Let me answer
him: In our town there are two potters; one fashions [his products] from water,
and the other from clay: who is the more praiseworthy?’ ‘He who fashions them
from water, he replied. ‘If he can fashion [man] from water, surely he can do
so from clay!’ In other words, the concept of
resurrection of the dead, which is so fantastical to our modern mind, logically
speaking makes more sense than birth. Rebuilding what was is not as amazing as
building what never was. Therefore, the
first name of our daughter, Tehilla, is derived from praise.
The
second name, Ester, has two functions. It is the name of an ancestor (my wife’s
Great Grandmother, who apparently was a very cute lady) and it captures a
different idea behind birth. Briefly, the idea of Ester is the idea of the
hidden. The name Ester literally means,
‘hiddeness’ which is why she is the central character in the Purim story where
the hidden hand of G-d manipulates a favorable outcome. The idea is that even if we don’t see it,
there is a thread to our lives and an agenda.
There is no greater example of that than pregnancy. There is a hidden child inside and each
nuance of the child profoundly influences the rest of a parent’s life. Aside
from possible health issues, personality traits and even looks will change the
course of the future. There is a hidden agenda
that we have no control over, but we believe that G-d has just the perfect
package we need to complete our life task.
So
that is the name, Tehilla Ester. And we hope these names cause her to
always see how extraordinary life is and how the hidden hand of G-d is behind
everything.
.
