It's All Coming Together Now...

It's funny, how often we don't understand the true significance of various events in our lives until some time after, in retrospect. Even funnier is that we don't understand our own choices until long after we've made them.

When I set out on a quest to find my Hebrew name last year, I wanted to find something that was meaningful, sounded good, reflected my personality and at the same time gave a more defined direction for the future. "Nissan", after the month I was born in, was actually the first suggestion that I heard, but I dismissed it immediately because I thought that was too obvious, and therefore boring. Interestingly enough, a long and thorough search eventually brought me back to the starting point, and the name, initially meaningless, became meaningful and significant. Doing research on my "real" name led me to see that "Nissan" is actually the exact and most accurate equivalent of the name I was given at birth. My mother did not research the name that she gave me. She said she just liked it. I happened to have a fairly distant relative who had the same name, and her parents came to the hospital while my mom was recovering from a very difficult and life-threatening (for both of us) delivery and tried to force her to find me another name, claiming that if she gives me the name of a living relation, she'll bring bad luck and misfortune on the older person that way. Ironically, the translation of my name means "peace", but from the start it became an apple of discord in the family, casting a shadow over my mother's relationship with those relatives for years to come.

Growing up, I had no idea what my name means. It was extremely common, and to me sounded extremely plain, boring, and insignificant. "Peace" was just such an abstract context. Peace to whom and through what means? If the name was supposed to reflect one's destiny, as I grew up believing, my own name only hid mine from me, and certainly did not reveal anything of any substance. I was never particularly "peaceful", nor did I seek to bring "peace" to others. And I felt bitter thinking that my name was a poor fit for me, and that essentially I was just assigned a label to go by, with nothing behind it except my mother taking a liking to the way it sounded with my last name. When translated to English, it just sounded stupid. I hated it at times, coped with it at best. When the time came to choose my Hebrew name, it was a really big deal for me, because at last I got to exercise my own choice in finding a name that fit me, and perhaps indirectly choosing a new destiny. Or rather A destiny. I thought that someone who had an ill-fitting name could not really be destined for anything in particular, could not have a legacy for the future.

From the start, I knew that I didn't want a stereotypical Hebrew name. I loved my dead ancestors dearly, but all their names were already being used by younger generations or were so standard and common that there was no real point to using them for me, or just did not reflect who I was. That part was very painful for me to realize. Part of the reason I decided to adopt a Hebrew name was the intense longing to strengthen my identity by reconnecting with family roots, something I had wanted to do for many years. Obviously, a Hebrew name would be just the first step. In reality, only by building a strong family with a firm foundation in Jewish and family values and traditions could I fill in some of the gap created by Diaspora and persecution. However, that first step to me was very important and I was hoping that somehow I would come to embody those values that despite all the hardships were passed on from generation to generation. I was very proud of my ancestors for not succumbing to assimilation and managing to carry through the kind of heritage I could be proud to carry on. However, all those men and women who came before me were very different from me in many ways, and faced a very different set of challenges than I'm living.

I come from a line of very strong women with extremely willful and determined personalities... and yet, when I thought of myself, I realized that alone was not enough, that somehow my path would always be different from everyone I ever knew, or heard of, and though I was free to adopt as much from the examples they had set as I cared to, in the end, I had to be my own, independent person and embrace the present and the future in my own unique way. That's how I finally decided that the set of Jewish names that ran through the family was not for me. I would not only be reconnecting with the unbroken chain of descent that was lost in the darkness of time, I would also be building something new and original. It did not suit me to just live in the past.

And so I started looking through other Biblical names, perhaps lesser known ones, that could reflect my own individuality in its full complexity. I wanted a name that was strong, passionate, independent, tumultuous, interesting, and yet feminine and delicate at the same time. And there was no shortage of incredible, inspiring, complex, and spiritually elevated female Biblical characters. I considered everything from Rivka to Yael, Deborah, and Yehudit, and yet none seemed a good fit, despite having awesome meanings, the kind of context any woman could be proud of, and depth of many layers for exploration. However, they were just not for me, did not sound right, and there was nothing I could do about the lack of enthusiasm in connection to all of them. At last I gave up, and started to think a little out of the box. I started looking at various words that could be helpful and could describe my personality. Unfortunately, most names I found were too specific, and at best described only one character trait of mine, which was obviously not enough. I don't think of myself as a one-trait person!

Someone suggested the name "Aviva" since I was born in the spring. I really liked that name, but again it was a little too generic for my taste, and did not sit well. Reluctantly, I decided to do a search on my "given" name to see if that will bring any inspiration. Research yielded some fascinating results. Turned out my name has a bit of a background. I already knew that Irina was a Greek name that came from a fictional ancient Greed deity related to peace. That character appeared in "Lysistrata" as a symbolic girl, whose body parts were divided among various Greek provinces to stand for various territories they went to war about. The whole thing was, in fact, a big joke. Or so I thought. My foraging in various sources revealed that Ireni, in fact, was indeed a legitimately worshipped "deity", who had a cult following. She was one of a host of such deities, and the specific kind of peace she provided was related to economic prosperity. Furthermore, she was associated with the month of April (in which I was born, and which generally coincides with the month of Nissan!) and the law!!! Research about the month of Nissan revealed more interesting associations, such that it was a month associated with leadership and royalty, as well as law (due to Yitzchak's presumed birth on the 15 of Nissan, which also became the first day of Pesach later on), and of course all the things that are generally associated with spring - fertility, rebirth, blossoming, etc. In more advanced research on Chabad's website, I found that it was also associated with the right hand/chesed/spiritual development, and was a counterpart to Sivan (or the month of May or June), and the holiday of Shavuot, the left hand, physical development and progression.

To make a long story short, knowing all that made me realize that the name was a perfect fit and I decided to adopt it, although I was left with some questions. I was not sure what kind of rebirth and rejuvenation the name was bringing about to whom, and how. However, at the time, I was just happy that I finally found something that fits, and went on with my life. With time I became further involved in MJE, going to classes regularly, etc... and one day, sitting in class, I realized that I knew! I knew what my name was hinting at! It was there on the surface from the start, yet somehow evaded me. My desire to reconnect with my family roots... to bring back the strong Jewish identity and culture the way it once was... that was reflect in the blossoming of the spring that my birth and both my names were pointing at...

Stayed tuned for the continuation of that journey of self-discovery and where it will bring me!

(To be continued...)

Exploring,
Irina/Nissan