For many years I have followed the charming kabbalistic custom of personalizing the Amida prayer, which I recite as part of my daily devotions shared with the myriads of Israel. It gives a great feeling of connection to realise that at almost every moment of the day, somewhere on this planet, some Jewish person is saying just the same prayer as I do. This personalization is achieved as follows. Towards the end of the prayer, as we pray that we may be saved from speaking untruths, I insert a verse from the Bible which begins with the same letter as my Hebrew name, and ends with the last letter of my Hebrew name. My Hebrew name happens to be "David" and the verse I use is from the book of I Chronicles,16:11, which means "Seek the Lord and his saving power, implore him continually." The verse begins with the Hebrew letter dalet, the first word being "dirshu – seek" and the last word ends with dalet "tamid – continually." I have always found this an inspiring thought, because most human beings get tired if we ask too many favours of them, however gracious they may be, but God, the verse assures us, is unlike flesh and blood, and never tires of our petitions, however egregious they may be at times.
There are two reasons for adding such a verse (you may find a list of them in some prayer books.) The first is that it adds a personal touch to a fixed formula, of which there is a danger, as the prophet Isaiah says, that it can become "a commandment of men learned by rote." I like to have my initial on my handkerchiefs, so why not on my prayers? The second reason is the kabbalistic reason, rather strange perhaps to us modern rationalists. The Kabbalists declare that on Judgment Day, that day on which we meditate at the awesome season of Rosh Hashana and Kippur, each individual will be called to the Grand Jury on high to determine the appropriateness of his or her deeds. The first innocent demand of the prosecutor is, of course, "What is your name?" Needless to say, prosecutors always know what your name is, but they ask nevertheless "for the record." And – guess what? We all find to our distress that we have forgotten our names! What a disconcerting way to embark on so significant an inquiry! This may seem like a kabbalistic fancy, but there is a beautiful lesson in it. Quite a few people, when they get old, are afflicted with a devastating disease which affects their memory, until eventually they cannot remember the most elementary facts about themselves, or the faces of those with whom they have been familiar for much of their lives. Many of us have little patience with such sadly burdened people, and perhaps it is salutory to feel that, at the end, all of us forget our names. Our life truly becomes a sleep and a forgetting. The Kabbalists offer a solution. When asked our name, we are quickly to recite the last paragraph of the Amida, (which, apparently, we do not forget if we have been faithful to recite it) and there we find a broad hint of our name, and can answer the first demand correctly. In my case, I get the hint "D-d" and need only to insert the missing vav, which is the only letter that fits there. Quite a neat idea. Our sages have a solution to every problem.
Now some years ago I had a serious motor accident. While crossing the street, I was struck by a car and thrown on to the road. Even though the impact did not kill me, there was great danger that I could be run over by another vehicle and sent prematurely in the direction of that tribunal which I just mentioned. But I was lucky! My sainted father-in-law, who in his lifetime had petitioned the Almighty continually, even though his name was not David, but never on his own behalf, appeared before the Throne of Glory and interceded for me. Immediately, the angel who appeared to the donkey of the prophet Balaam, was dispatched and stood in front of my unconscious person, brandishing his fiery sword. Of course, the motorists did not see him, because their eyes, like the eyes of Balaam, were dimmed by their concentration on worldly matters. But the eyes of the cars, which we perceive as brilliant headlights, were open wide, and they swerved to avoid me, to the astonishment of their owners, who the next day took their cars to their service station to have the steering checked, confused as they were by that sudden lurch.
Well, my shattered body was scraped off the highway by the compassionate ambulance men, and taken to our excellent local hospital. As you can imagine the dread Angel of Death was convinced that I was caught in his toils, and he came looking for me. "David, David," he cried out, brandishing his huge scythe. "Look, I have a warrant for your cardiac arrest!" Well, we fooled him, with the help of another kabbalistic tradition. Prior to the angel's advent, my Hebrew name had been formally changed in accordance with the proper formula for so doing. I was no longer "David." Now I was "Hanan David", having added a name which means "merciful." So when that apparition with the scythe arrived, I was fully prepared. "You are looking for David, Mr. Angel of Death? Awfully sorry, but there must be some mistake. There is no David here. My name is Hanan David. An understandable confusion." The Angel of Death looked narrowly at me, and scowled. He shuffled his papers, and scanned them again, hoping, I suppose, to find one for a Hanan David. Not having succeeded, he grunted in annoyance at his wasted journey. "I suppose I must go back for further instructions," he finally conceded. "I suppose you must. Have a good day, Mr. Angel of Death, see you again" said I, adding under my breath so as not to seem impolite, "but not too soon."
After my recovery, I began to think about that verse that I recite daily. It was now only partially correct. I had to add another verse to allow for my newly added name. So I consulted several lists of such names with their respective verses, and came up with a blank. Hanan is not a very common name, although it occurs more than once in the Bible, and was borne by one of the members of King David's court, which made it an appropriate name to add to my original name of David. So I had to go looking for a verse myself. This was not an easy task, because the letter het, with which the name Hanan begins, is one of the less common letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and to find a verse which begins with that letter and also ends in the Hebrew letter nun was quite difficult. But I was not worried. If the tax collector chooses to examine your documents, and find them in order, he will normally leave you alone for many years, and I figured that that angel would take a while before paying me another visit. So each time I studied, particularly when I read the books of Psalms and Proverbs, I kept my eyes open for an appropriate verse.
I was reading the book of Proverbs one day, when I shouted "Eureka!", although I did not go running through the street like old Archimedes. There in chapter 20 verse 30 was my personal verse, beginning with het and ending with nun. It is quite a difficult verse to understand, and even the Talmudic sages have various ways of understanding it. But the interpretation which is most meaningful to me is: "Painful blows cleanse away evil, and so do stripes which purify the innermost parts." This seemed to fit my situation exactly. Most of us go through hard times which leave us with stripes and painful wounds. In my case this was literally true, although in many cases the wounds can be wounds of the mind or the soul which are even more painful than those which the body must sometimes bear. Often, however, they serve as a purification, purging away evil, and leaving us better, if chastened, human beings. The English poet Robert Herrick expresses an essentially Jewish doctrine when he declares:
God hath his whips here to a double end:
The bad to punish and the good to amend.
Do I belong to the former group or the latter? I do not rightly know, but you can imagine what my hope is. And will you let me hope too that you join me in the same grouping?