In This Moment: A Rabbi's Notebook
On Friday Jews entered Elul, the final month of the Hebrew calendar. As we count the days until Rosh Hashanah, we set the tone with a special greeting: L’Shana Tova Tikateyvu. May you be inscribed for a good year.
What a perfect greeting for a people so focused on the power and sanctity of the written word.
We are speaking of the medieval metaphor of a Book of Life where our names are recorded, a centerpiece of the Rosh Hashanah liturgy. But in fact the greeting can be more generic. Wherever our names are written, let it be for life and not for death, for good and not for evil. “Each of us has a name,” wrote the Hebrew poet Zelda, “given by our sins and given by or longing.”1
While Jews will spend the next few weeks trying to symbolically inscribe their names into the Book of Life, Donald Trump will be trying to physically have his inscribed onto the walls of the Kennedy Center, a place from which he was explicitly ordered to remove it.
According to The New York Times and other news organizations, the board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts “voted on Thursday, to inscribe President Trump’s name on the building beneath the main signage, according to two people with direct knowledge of the proceedings, aggressively testing a federal judge’s order.”
They’re not just planning to glue the letters onto that wall, mind you, or scribble those letters on with an autopen. They are planning to “inscribe” them, permanently, one if by chisel, two if by sandblasting. My money is on the noisiest and most destructive means possible. Can you nuke your name onto a wall?
Some inscribe their name in a Book of Life during Elul, with deeds of righteousness.
Trump inscribes his onto a wall, illegally, in a deed of pure selfishness.
He might think that by inscribing the name into the marble, it will be impossible to remove it when he leaves office. He is obsessed with leaving a permanent mark on Washington DC. And he’s absolutely obsessed with his mortality.
Sadly for Trump, I’ve spent enough time around misspelled tombstones and botched memorial plaques to know that nothing is ever “written in stone,” even when it is actually written in stone. Stonecutters routinely scuff over their typos. They can take a name off a marble headstone in, maybe ten minutes. Trump’s name can and will be removed from everything - everything, that is, except for the Epstein files.
His name will be erased
Jews have another expression that is appropriate for this occasion. Whenever we mention someone who is considered so evil that we don’t want to say their name, we append it with the epithet “Yimach Sh’mo,” “May their name be erased.”
So, for example, many Jews will not say “Hitler” without adding “Yimach Sh’mo,” or on Purim, we say “Haman, Yimach Sh’mo,” as we drown out his name. (In Boston, some still use that for Bucky Dent). It’s interesting that we don’t say “May his name be cursed,” but rather that the name should be erased. It already is cursed. No one names their kid “Adolf” anymore. Erasure is the most stringent, painful form of curse. Irrelevance. Being ignored. Bad ratings.
Trump knows that.
The expression is based on Psalm 109, which, as I’ve written before, is the perfect biblical text for the Trump era. The pertinent verse is 109:13
The word literally means “erase,” and in fact the modern Hebrew word for a classroom eraser is etymologically connected.
In biblical concepts of divine retribution against the wicked, blotting out a person’s name symbolizes the complete eradication of their memory and legacy. As Trump would say regarding Iran’s nukes, “obliteration.”
See concordance entry below:
There’s a connection to clapping, not as applause but as means of stomping out the evil spirits, similar to what we do with Haman’s name on Purim. It’s interesting that in the Bible, nature (rivers, fields and trees, even animals) also participates in this divine repudiation. The whole world has suffered through this insufferable name, and now this name is being erased.
In my book, Trump has already earned “Yimach sh’mo” status, but now it doesn’t need to wait for his death. If his name goes back up on the Kennedy Center, inscribed in a manner that he thinks will be indelible, the expression “Yimach Sh’mo” will gain a second meaning.
May his name be erased from history - and may it be erased literally from that wall. Speedily, in our days, and with a minimum of sandblasting.
EACH OF US HAS A NAME
Each of us has a name
given by God
and given by our parents
Each of us has a name
given by our stature and our smile
and given by what we wear
Each of us has a name
given by the mountains
and given by our walls
Each of us has a name
given by the stars
and given by our neighbors
Each of us has a name
given by our sins
and given by our longing
Each of us has a name
given by our enemies
and given by our love
Each of us has a name
given by our celebrations
and given by our work
Each of us has a name
given by the seasons
and given by our blindness
Each of us has a name
given by the sea
and given by
our death.
© Translation: 2004, Marcia Lee Falk
