Rabbi Sherman is on sabbatical. Please enjoy an Honorable Mensch-Ion from our Rabbinic Intern, Moe Howard.

There is a common misconception that God’s name cannot be erased. In fact, “God” is neither a name nor is it sacrosanct; it is an English word identifying the One we call by a number of divine Hebrew names, none of which can be effaced.

But even this isn’t quite true. God’s divine name can be erased—and God demands that it must—in one case. As the parsha describes, a man overcome by “a fit of jealousy” who suspects his wife of infidelity is to bring her before the priest, who issues a curse in God’s name on paper:

“The priest shall put these curses down in writing and rub it off into the water of bitterness, and make the woman drink the water of bitterness …” (Numbers 5:23–4)

The ritual is disturbing, not least for the desecration of God’s name. How could the holy priest be ordered to commit a literal hillul ha-shem? The answer, according to the Sages, is peace: “Great is peace, as the Holy One, blessed be He, said that the great name written in sanctity be erased in water in order to put peace between a man and his wife.”

If peace is greater than God’s name, how much the more so than ours. Yet how willing are we to erase our name for its sake? To forego being recognized, rewarded, or right for peace in the home, the community, the world? Only when we loosen our grip on shem (“name”) to make room in it for lo (“for the other”) can we have shalom “peace.”

May we find the will to make that room for each other—just as God does for us.

Shabbat Shalom