The day before my Kabbalah class, I found myself frustrated by my own name.

It sounded so thoroughly American, so thoroughly non-Jewish, that I almost felt disconnected from it. As my own Jewish practice has deepened, I’ve become increasingly aware of how much my family’s story mirrors that of many American Jews: each generation becoming a little more assimilated than the last. My name seemed like another reminder of that story.

Then, during Rabbi Ari Solish’s Kabbalah class, something unexpected happened.

He mentioned a teaching of the sages: after the end of prophecy, one of its last remaining vestiges is the naming of a child. Parents may not be prophets in the biblical sense, but when they give a child a name, they sometimes participate in something that reaches beyond themselves. A name can become a hint of a person’s future calling.

I had heard this idea before, but this time it landed differently.

Almost immediately, I remembered something I had forgotten.

Matthew is Matityahu.

The English name had obscured its Hebrew origin so........

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