My Sister, the F***ing Warrior!

One day when my sister was in fifth or sixth grade, she returned home from school very upset.  Several classmates -- Linda, Lori, and Lisa -- had given her a hard time when she told them that, like them, her Hebrew name was Leah.

No, they told her, that couldn't be.  Her English name was Amy and therefore, according to them, there was no way her Hebrew name could possibly be Leah.

In fact, Amy's Hebrew name is Leah -- Leah Meryl -- in memory of our father's maternal grandfather, "Grandpa Louie" and a maternal cousin, who always was known to our mother and Aunt Claire as Tante Mina.

Here's what Kolatch -- in his Complete Dictionary of English and Hebrew First Names -- has to say about Leah:

From the Hebrew meaning "to be weary."  Also, from the Assyrian meaning "mistress, ruler."  In the Bible (Genesis 29:17), the daughter of Laban and the first of Jacob's four wives.  Lea is a variant spelling and also a French form.  Leia is the Hebrew form  Lia is an Italian form.  Lea and Lee are pet forms.

When I spoke with her earlier today, she told me that she was "moving slowly." Although that's uncharacteristic behavior for her, it's no surprise that she would "be weary."  After all, she's trying -- as are we all -- to wrap her head around the breast cancer diagnosis she received on Thursday, after a routine annual mammogram on Tuesday that was followed by a biopsy on Wednesday.

Once she processes this information, I hope she will ditch her weariness, embracing instead the Assyrian meaning of Leah so that she can be the "ruler" over this disease.  More to the point, I hope that going forward she will take on the persona suggested by one of her friends and prove herself to be a "F***ing Warrior" in the weeks and months ahead.

Brought to You by the Letter "B"

For a long time, I've known that my Aunt Claire and her first cousin, Phyllis, both have middle names that begin with "B" -- Claire Bertha and Phyllis Beverly -- and that they were named in memory of the same person.  Except that the person's name began with "B," I knew nothing more.

So I asked my Aunt Claire, who told me that it was my grandfather's mother, Brana.

Looking the name up in my copy of the Complete Dictionary of English and Hebrew First Names, I could not find it as Aunt Claire spelled it:  B-r-a-n-a.

However, the last entry on the bottom of page 294 is "Brina." In addition to noting a Hebrew spelling of bet-resh-yud-yud-nun-aleph, the entry says, "From the Yiddish, meaning 'brown.'  Also, from the Slavic, meaning 'protector.'"

The first entry on the top of page 295 is "Brine."  Like the English spelling, which is nearly identical to Brina except for the last letter, so too does the Hebrew spelling have a different letter at the end:  bet-resh-yud-yud-nun-ayin.  The description of the name, however, is identical:  "From the Yiddish, meaning 'brown.'  Akin to Brune."

Here's what Kolatch has to say about Brune:  "From the Yiddish, meaning 'brown,' or from the German name Brunhild, meaning 'fighter in armor.' See also Brina and Brine."  Like the English, the Hebrew spelling is slightly different than the two previous names:  bet-resh-vav-nun-ayin.

Satisfied that one of these variants was my great-grandmother's name, I asked Aunt Claire what she knew about her.  She said she didn't know much except that she'd died young, and that nobody talked much about her.  Her husband, Jacob, for whom I am named, remarried and lived into his 90s.

I have to admit that Aunt Claire's descriptions of her paternal grandparents make me wonder if it was Brina who carried the BRCA gene mutation that appears to have been passed along to my grandfather (he died from prostate cancer), and definitely came down to my mom, to my aunt, and to me.

Although we'll never know the answer, of course, it seems plausible to me.

Two Rabbis, a Book, and Lots of Names

During yesterday's "hallway kiddish" following Shabbat services, Marlene, a longtime member and regular at the minyan, handed me this article that she'd clipped from The Jewish Week after reading my recent Ten Minutes of Torah essay.  I had not seen Rabbi Wolpe's short piece, and appreciated that she had saved it for me.

Later, toward the end of Torah study, Rabbi Stein told the group that he's in the process of giving away the books in his library--he'll be retiring at the end of June--and that we were welcome to stop in to see what might be of interest.  Needless to say, many of us followed him down to his office, which is overflowing with shelves of neatly arranged and well organized volumes.

After a few minutes of browsing, I asked the rabbi about a book I've seen referenced many times that always sounds interesting, although I didn't know its exact title.

"It's about names," I said, which was enough of a clue for him to pull this well-worn red volume from the shelf:  Complete Dictionary of English and Hebrew First Names by Alfred J. Kolatch.

"I've been using it for 40 years," he told me.

Indeed, the binding is broken in a few spots, and a whole section of pages containing feminine names from Billie, a feminine pet form of William, to Elya, from the Syriac and Hebrew, meaning "dirge, elegy" is full detached from the rest of the book.

Nonetheless, after just a few minutes of flipping through the book's 400-plus pages (and a second, more scholarly work, also about names), I told him I'd take the former and thanked him for this unexpected gift.  I'm grateful not only to add this particular volume to my own collection, but glad to have it as a keepsake from a rabbi who has been exceedingly kind and caring to me, and from whom I have learned much during the last four years.

Only after I left the synagogue did I read Rabbi Wolpe's column as I waited for the bus.  Entitled "A Name, A Soul," it begins with this sentence:

The Book of Exodus, in Hebrew, is called "Sh'mot," or names.

Rabbi Wolpe goes on to talk about the value and importance of names, before closing with this paragraph:

The crown of a good name, teaches Pirke Avot, is the greatest of all crowns.  In a graveyard, whatever other inscription a stone bears, it invariably records the deceased's name.  Tyranny seeks to erase names.  Memory and love restore and preserve them.

I am honored to be the keeper of Rabbi Stein's copy of "Kolatch," into whose worn red cover I have slipped the clipping of Rabbi Wolpe's short essay.  I believe it's the perfect spot in which to keep it.