Nathrangking

This is not the sort of thing that I normally do, but I was inspired by @Silva to step outside my comfort zone this year. I owe him thanks for inspiring me and providing much food for thought.

Today is Yom Hashoah or as it is called in English Israel's day of remembrance for the Holocaust. The Nazis YS"Z did many horrific things. One of these was stripping people of their names and attempting to reduce them to something so base as to be unrecognizable. They wanted them to lose something, but what was it that they wanted to achieve? 

 What are names? Some might view names as identity. This is who I am boiled down to a couple of syllables or words. Some might say a name is power. You can classify the world by way of this power. Yet others may claim a name is a burden as there tends to be a lot of baggage that comes with names. They can tell the history of a person and reveal so many hidden aspects. Perhaps then we should view names as a testament of history both personal and familial.

However, I would like to propose something else entirely. I preface by saying this is no place to be judging or analyzing the truth behind religious customs. In Judaism there are many fascinating customs surrounding names. I would like to highlight two. Among the Jews who descend from many parts of Europe there is a custom that one of the ways that babies are named is to choose a name or a part of one that comes from a family member who had passed away. This is a form of memory that preserves the memory of those who are no longer with us and keeps their legacies alive long after they have gone. Is a name then tied to memory as well? A second is a wider custom among most religious Jews. When people fall ill or suffer some other terrible tragedy a name is added to them such as Chaim meaning life for a male or Chaya which is a derivative of Chaim for a female. There is the belief that a name impacts your reality. It defines who you are in a very real way. It might be said that your name could represent a certain reality or even life itself.

It might be safe to say that names are complex and not to be taken lightly. If it is any of these things then the Nazis sought to take identity, power, history, memory, and life itself from millions of helpless victims. We too often lose sight of the significance and power of having a name. Maybe every now and then we can take a moment and reflect on how lucky we are and remember those who will not be. 

At this moment I must again give credit to @Silva for informing me of that which I did not know. I now take from his post and defer to his powerful words. "Some time ago, a teacher introduced me a website called Illuminate (https://www.illuminatethepast.org/). Essentially, each Yom Hashoah, they have people around the world light virtual candles in honor of someone who died in the Holocaust. The website provides a name and a little about the person when possible. It doesn't capture all the nuances of a name, all the slight implications and meanings so innate to the person and those who lived around them. How can it? But it's something, a start, and that's worth something.
 

If you feel comfortable doing so, take a minute, light a candle, remember a name for those who cannot. As the days go by and you hear of recent events, please pause for a moment and recognize the fortune of your own world and immediate surroundings; they might not be ideal, but they could be much, much worse. Recognize the power of the names in your life and never think it your right to deprive another person of their own. As many a fictional character has said, names have power; don't take it for granted."

To bear a name is to bear something so powerfully precious. Let us never take that for granted and forget.