Jewish Name, the

“Listen to me, Mrs. Rosenberg,” her heavy face was flushed with excitement. “Let me take her. Why should she die, the innocent babe? I will care for her as if she was my own. I never had children, you know. Give her to me . . .”

As they walked, they came across a group of children playing in the sand. The Baal Shem Tov went over to them and said to the nearest one, “What is your name?”

Elina had a typical Soviet childhood, immersed in an atheist culture with little understanding of her Jewish identity.

My new name held a softness to it, yet lent strength to my effort to heal and begin to live life again as a whole, and wholly new, person.

Most of our neighbors knew each other, even though hundreds of people occupied one building. They also all knew that my family was Jewish.

Our name is the most outer manifestation of who we are, yet it is connected to our innermost selves.

One morning, when Paul was seven, I received a stat call to the emergency room . . . “Oh G‑d,” I pleaded in my thoughts, “Please, not this one. Not him.”