Rabbi Yankee and Binah Teitelbaum had been debating the issue, thinking that they might name their new baby after one of the recently slain yeshivah boys in Israel. But pacing the halls of the birth center, it occurred to Yankee that they couldn’t pick just one.
“We didn’t think right away of using all three. But how do you choose one? It just didn’t feel right to pick one,” said Teitelbaum the morning after his newborn son’s brit milah on July 14. At the Jewish ceremony eight days after birth, a baby’s Hebrew name is officially announced, and the Teitelbaums decided upon Eyal Gil-ad Naftali, in honor of the three kidnapped and murdered Israeli teenagers Eyal Yifrach, 19; Naftali Frankel, 16; and Gilad Shaar, 16.
The couple lives in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y., and has six children: Yoni, 13; Shalhevet, 12; Avichai, 9; Ehud Daniel, 7; Tzofia Mariyasha, 3; and the baby, whose name came to them as they were walking up and down those halls, recounted Teitelbaum.
Since the Teitelbaums had named two previous children in similar ways—after young Jews killed in Israel—friends and family knew the possibility of naming their baby son after one of the boys was very likely.
“We didn’t think we were doing anything unique,” said Yankee Teitelbaum. “We were just doing what felt right.”
Still, the pronouncement of the name during the ceremony drew tears and strong emotions from family members.
“My sisters were crying and very emotional,” he said. “Everyone thought it was beautiful.” Some people were expecting one of the names, he added, but not all three.
‘A Constant Reminder’
The couple’s oldest daughter, Shalhevet, was named after Shalhevet Pass, a 10-month-old baby girl shot by a Palestinian sniper in 2001. Their son Ehud Daniel honors Israeli Defense Force soldier Ehud Goldwasser, 30, who was abducted and killed in July 2006, prompting Israel’s Second Lebanon War that summer; and American Jewish soldier Daniel Agami, 25, of Coconut Creek, Fla., who was killed in Iraq on June 21, 2007.
“We wanted to honor them and to have a memory of them, and let their souls live on in a new child,” said Teitelbaum, adding that both kids remain “aware and proud of their names.”
The Teitelbaums said they communicated with the family of Shalhavet Pass, noting they were very touched by the gesture. “They believe that every baby named after her has a part of her neshama [soul],” he said.
They also met the Goldwasser family in Israel during the 2006 summer war, visiting bomb shelters and bringing toys for children. Teitelbaum said the experience was “very inspiring.”
People are now telling them to communicate with the families of the three Israeli boys.
“Maybe we should,” replied Teitelbaum. “Maybe it would give comfort.”
He also noted that the baby was born at a very important moment in Jewish history.
“There is a strong sense of Jewish unity, of Am Yisrael,” said Teitelbaum. “The kidnapped boys were taken just because they were Jews, and they were taken in our days”—days that have now been marked with a barrage of rocket fire on Israelis by Hamas in Gaza.
“But that strong sense of unity wears off over time,” he continued. “Down the road, it doesn’t have that same effect. But naming a child that is a constant reminder of that time—that period of Jewish history—for you and for the child.
“The other element is that everyone felt that sorrow, that pain, and then it eventually, it gets easier and wears off. But for those families, every single day of their lives they will remember and relive it. Their children became part of the larger Jewish community’s family. We’ll share in that. And be reminded of that every day of our lives.”
Teitelbaum, who is an ordained rabbi and owns a company in Crown Heights called Jewish Films, said he attended a class the night of bris that was very poignant, given what’s going on now in Israel.
The Rebbe—Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory—said that the best answer to the wrongs in this world is to counteract that with more ahavat Yisrael (“love of the Jewish people”) and more ahavat chinam (“unconditional love”).
“That’s how you combat the evil; the truest form of fighting back against hate is having love,” said Teitelbaum. “To do something positive and put positive energy into something that feels so dark and negative.”
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