Shalom Auslander
Appearances
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
Elie said that his big brother said that Rabbi Breyer once broke a student's nose by slapping the student's face. Dov said that his big brother said that Rabbi Breyer had once broken a student's arm when he was dragging the student from the room for talking during prayers. Rabbi Breyer was the scariest rabbi in the whole yeshiva. © BF-WATCH TV 2021
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
And when, at the end of the first test, at the end of the first week, Rabbi Breyer shouted, pencils down, it was as if the commandment had come from God himself. At recess, we stood huddled together on the concrete slab beside the door, afraid to play, worried that Breyer was somewhere watching. Avi and Ellie started flipping baseball cards.
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
Flipping cards is considered gambling, which is forbidden, so we were supposed to return the cards to each other at the end of recess. Nobody ever did. Ellie won a large stack of cards from Avi, and I flipped Ellie next. I lost an old Willie Randolph, an afraid Lou Piniella, but I won a mint Carl Yastrzemski, whom I was pretty sure was Jewish. I'd been trying to win him for months.
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
The bell rang and everyone headed glumly back to class, where we sat quietly at our desks, waiting for Rabbi Breyer to return. I took out my Kali Yastremski, turned it over, and carefully wrote my name across the back. I didn't want to lose him and didn't plan on flipping him. "'Name of the Creator!' Rabbi Breyer shouted.
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
I jumped and turned to find him standing beside me, his face red, his furious finger pointing at the baseball card on my desk." Name of the creator, he shouted again. He grabbed the card from my desk. Name of the creator? I was confused. Yaz? Rabbi Breyer slapped my hand, grabbed me by the ear, and led me to the head of the classroom. He held Yastrzemski over his head and shook him.
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
This, he declared loudly, must never be thrown away. It must never touch the ground. It must never be covered. Then Rabbi Breyer waved the card in my face and told me that my name was the same name as God's, and I must never write it again. The Jewish God has 72 names, and even though I was only eight years old, I already knew a lot of them. There was Adonai, there was Yahweh, there was Elohim.
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
There was He who was full of mercy, He who was quick to anger, the Holy Spirit, the Divine Presence, the Rock, the Savior, and now, somewhere near the bottom of the list, there was Shalom. Peace. My name.
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
Rabbi Breyer handed me the baseball card and told me to take it to the prayer hall upstairs and immediately put it in the Shamos box. Shamos means names, and it was the place where any old or unusable names of God are left to be discarded. Pages from prayer books, crumbling Talmuds, old Torah scrolls, and, from now on, anything I wrote my name on.
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
When the box was filled, the rabbis would take it outside, dig a hole, and bury the pages in the ground. From now on, Rabbi Breyer said, when writing my name, I was to replace the last Hebrew letter, the M sound, with a simple apostrophe. I was no longer Shalom. I was Shaloh. I headed upstairs with a sigh. Life with God's name was more difficult than I imagined.
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
I was annoyed with God for being so selfish with them all. He had 71 other names. I couldn't see why he'd mind so much if I used just one. I didn't want to tell God how to do his job, but I wondered if maybe there weren't bigger things for him to be worrying about than who was using one of his six dozen names without permission. Isn't this, I wondered, what led to Holocausts?
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
The Seamus box in the prayer hall filled quickly. My homework, my test papers, my what I did this summer, even my highlights for children. And, buried at the bottom of the box, a pair of underpants my mother had written my name on with permanent marker. It seemed I couldn't go an hour without making something holy. and I wasn't the only one.
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
Every morning, my mother wrote my name on my lunch bag, the name of God in bright red magic marker with a quickly drawn smiley face just below it. And every afternoon, Rabbi Breyer would grab my lunch bag, shout name of the creator, dump the food out onto my desk, and send me upstairs to the Shamos box with my suddenly sacred lunch bag. It didn't end with writing.
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
I was standing at the urinal one day when Avi came in. "'Hey, Shalom,' he said. "'Name of the creator!' Rabbi Breyer shouted from inside the nearby stall. "'Name of the creator!' We heard him fumbling with his pants and ran back to class. Later, as we sat with our heads down as punishment, Rabbi Breyer explained that speaking God's name in the bathroom was also forbidden.
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
And then, a few weeks later, it suddenly all clicked. I began spelling my name with an apostrophe without even thinking. My mother stopped writing my name on my lunch bag, and my friends stopped saying hello to me in the bathroom. It had been a hassle at the beginning, but now the whole God thing was growing on me. My classmates were named after rabbis and forefathers. Abraham? Isaac? Jacob?
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
Please, I was named after God. So I was surprised a few days later when I heard Rabbi Breyer, in the middle of an exam on the first chapter of Genesis, shout, Name of the Creator. I turned around, expecting to see him standing beside me, but he was on the far side of the classroom, standing behind Shlomo's desk, pointing a furious finger at Shlomo's test paper.
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
Name of the creator, he shouted again. And he slapped Shlomo's hand, grabbed him by the ear, and dragged him to the front of the class. Shlomo isn't technically a name of God, but it means his shalom, his peace. And for some reason, that day, Rabbi Breyer decided that was close enough.
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
But instead of feeling relieved that someone else in our classroom would share the burden of a holy name, I was disappointed. It was a pain in the ass being named God. But it was my pain. And it was my ass. Rabbi Breyer handed Shlomo his test paper and told me to take him upstairs to show him where the Shamos box was.
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
I still didn't quite understand God's reasoning behind the third commandment of thou shalt not use my name in vain. But I suddenly had a pretty good idea of the reason behind the first. Thou shalt have no other gods besides me. It's one thing to be the only God. It's quite another, lesser thing to be one of two. I headed upstairs with Shlomo two steps behind me.
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
I wanted to push him down the stairs. I wanted to shove him out the window. As we walked toward the prayer hall, I remembered that Rabbi Breyer told us that Moses had killed an Egyptian by uttering the name of God. Shlomo pushed his way in front of me and hurried to the Shamos box. Adonai, I whispered. Nothing. Yahweh, I said. Nothing.
This American Life
332: The Ten Commandments
I couldn't bear to watch him violating my Shamos box, so I turned and headed back to class, Shlomo running behind me, trying to keep up, using my name in vain and calling, Shalom, Shalom, wait up! As I squeezed my eyes shut and whispered, one last time, Elohim. Nothing. Nothing.