Daniel Noadyah, this little one, may he grow.
On Wednesday morning, I brought my youngest son into the covenant of Abraham, our forefather—in other words, we gave him a b'rit milah (ritual circumcision).
No, I’m uninterested in hearing your tirade about circumcision: male circumcision is not the same thing as female circumcision, aka female genital mutilation either in quantity or quality. Moreover, we don’t do it because we want to make a health statement—although there are undoubtedly health benefits (that site is not exactly non-partisan, by the way)—we (in our family) do it because it is incumbent upon us to do so from our religious perspective. In other words: God said so.
People asked me about his name quite a bit (Daniel Noadyah, in Hebrew דניאל נועדי-ה—tradition has us not write the final two letters together because they spell a name of God.) so I thought I'd write about it some. This is more or less a distillation of my discussion of it at the little “feast” we had after the circumcision on Wednesday. (Times are relative to Wednedsay; remember this.)
8 days ago our son was born on the first of the Jewish month of Av, which is an inflection point in one of the saddest eras in Jewish history. Beginning about 3 weeks ago (on the 17th of the month of Tammuz), the walls of Jerusalem were breached. On the first of Av, the holy Temple itself was invaded and destruction of it began—on two separate occasions 400 years apart—and culminated with the final destruction (first by the Babylonians, then by the Romans) on the ninth of Av [which was earlier today, and there was one rebuilding in between–ed.]. Daniel, in the bible, was born in the diaspora following the first destruction, and grew into a man described as “beloved”
כִּי חֲמוּדוֹת, אָתָּהand “wise and understanding”
“For you are beloved” (Daniel 9:23)
וְשִׁמְעֵ עֲלָךְ, דִּי רוּחַ אֱלָהִין בָּךְ; וְנַהִירוּ וְשָׂכְלְתָנוּ וְחָכְמָה יַתִּירָה, הִשְׁתְּכַחַת בָּךְNoadyah is only mentioned twice in the entire Bible, once in Nehemia (and there it refers to someone not so nice) and once in the eighth chapter of Ezra:
“For I have heard about you that the spirit of God is in you, and light, understanding and great wisdom is found in you” (Daniel 5:14)
וּבַיּוֹם הָרְבִיעִי נִשְׁקַל הַכֶּסֶף וְהַזָּהָב וְהַכֵּלִים בְּבֵית אֱלֹהֵינוּ, עַל יַד-מְרֵמוֹת בֶּן-אוּרִיָּה הַכֹּהֵן, וְעִמּוֹ, אֶלְעָזָר בֶּן-פִּינְחָס; וְעִמָּהֶם יוֹזָבָד בֶּן-יֵשׁוּעַ, וְנוֹעַדְיָה בֶן-בִּנּוּי--הַלְוִיִּם.Now the name comes, I hope, a bit clearer; and it is very apropos for the time. It represents my and Elana’s wishes for our child: that, like Daniel he begins his life here in the diaspora, beloved, and with understanding and wisdom, and like Noadyah, he should merit to return to Jerusalem to see the rebuilding of the Temple.
“And on the fourth day, the silver and gold vessels in the house of God were weight by the hand of Meramot son of Uriyah the priest, and with him Eliezer son of Phineas [another priest]; and with them Yozavad son of Yeshua and Noadyah son of Binui the Levites”
(Ezra 8:33)
A few other things:
- I am a Levite, and therefore so are my sons. It has become popular to name a series of children in a “theme” (all names beginning with “a” or “y”). Our theme is giving our children names after biblical Levites: Amram, Levi, Eliezer. The betting pool in the neighborhood was that we’d pick another one in the same series (giving us either “Kehat” or “Moshe”, those two being the missing “links” in the biblical chain:
Levi→Kehat→Amram→Moses→Eliezer
but we decided to go a bit further afield. - If you’re looking for interesting Biblical names, you really could do worse than to look towards the back of the Bible: the books of Ezra/Nehemia and 1,2 Chronicles are full of names you don’t normally run into, and many of them carry beautiful meanings in Hebrew and are pleasant-sounding in English translation.
- The title of this piece comes from the blessing (in the Ashkenazic [European] rite) given to the child after he is given his name: “פלוני) זה קטן, גדול יהיה)” “(so-and-so) this little one, may he become great [lit: big]”. It finishes:
“כשם שנכנס לברת, כן יכנס לתורה, לחופה, ולמעשים טובים” “As he hs brought into the covenant, so may he be brought to Torah [to study], to the chuppah [the wedding canopy] and to good deeds.
Amen!
Comments
Hey, mazal tov.
You know my brother Mitch is getting married on Sept. 3?
How are you doing? What are you doing? Are you still in Mill Basin? My current chavrusa grew up in Mill Basin (Stu Feldhamer, age 31), and went to Flatbush. (and Columbia College, and NYU GBA).
Posted by: thanbo | August 13, 2006 10:34 PM