A Bird by Any Other Name

Birdwatching is a hobby with the quality of homework. One could say of it, as Mark Twain allegedly said of golf, that it is “a good walk spoiled.” Rather than gazing at nature, one stalks it. Rather than looking at birds impressionistically as a poet might, one stares with the intensity of an ornithologist, eager to identify, or, if this is not possible, to make note of the creature’s size and markings, so that it can be identified later with the use of a guide.

The goal is not merely to admire the birds, though this is part of it, but also—and crucially—to learn their names. They are not just pigeons, but laughing doves. They are not just hummingbirds, but Palestine sunbirds. They are yellow-vented bulbuls, Smyrna kingfishers, and Eurasian jays.

The popularity of the saying that “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” can likely be attributed to the fact that this Shakespeare quote deeply confirms our intuitions about what names are and how they work. In our common understanding, names describe reality but do not constitute reality. They are practical, and sometimes beautiful—but they are not the thing itself.

Jewish thought comes with a different set of assumptions about names, which are rooted in an entirely different theory of language. God is referred to as “the one who spoke and the world came into being,” a reference to the fact that the universe itself is conceived of as work of language. According to the midrash, God’s first creation was the Hebrew alphabet, which He then used to build everything else. Letters, not atoms, are the basic element of Jewish cosmology.

Mystics are the physicists of this lettered universe—those who, like Bezalel from the book of Exodus, know “how to join the letters with which heaven and earth were created” (BT Berachot 55a). Known as Baalei Shem (masters of the Name), they would make use of esoteric divine names to effect physical changes in the world. If one were to ask a Baal Shem, he would tell you that a rose, if you called it “garbage,” would eventually start to stink. To this day, if one is sick or otherwise afflicted, Jewish mystics in this tradition may prescribe a name change as a remedy.

Something similar is at work with birdwatching. As my bird vocabulary expands, the phenomenological world around me grows and deepens. Presumably there were always Smyrna kingfishers and Palestine sunbirds in my neighborhood, but until I learned their names, I didn’t notice. Having a name for something is often what allows us to see it. In this sense, we too speak the world around us into creation.

In the Torah it is written that God “counts the stars” and “calls each one by name” (Psalms 147:4). God is, therefore, a Baal Shem in and of Himself, but despite all this, there are times when names fall short. This is the case in the book of Judges, when Manoach, after an extraordinary divine visitation, is chastised by an angel for asking its name.

Apparently, some things in heaven and earth lie beyond the grasp of words—at least as far as human language is concerned.

Names are holy and names are powerful, but there is also a place for silence, for wordlessness, for the ineffable. God has many names, but God is ultimately beyond all names. So too, in a certain sense, is the world around us. Thus we should be wary lest we, like Manoach, attempt to use names to tame reality rather than enter into relationship with it.

Names are holy and names are powerful, but there is also a place for silence, for wordlessness, for the ineffable.

In the book of Exodus, when Moses asks for God’s name, God replies cryptically: “I will be what I will be” (Exodus 3:14). In other words, don’t think you can put me in some tidy box, don’t flatten me, and don’t use my name as a defense against the inchoate power of this moment.

It’s advice that I should take. The other night, while walking through a park and talking on the phone, my words were blunted by the sudden realization of a massive something cutting through the air above my head.

I gasped. On the other end of the phone I could hear my friend asking what had happened, but I was too entranced to respond. The elegant winged creature landed on a tree bough and surveyed its new surroundings. Looking down from the tree, its gaze met mine as I stared up—grasping for words that I could not find.

A split second later, of course, I found them.

What I had seen was an owl.

I couldn’t help but wonder—what kind?

Matthew Schultz is the author of the essay collection “What Came Before” (2020). He is a rabbinical student at Hebrew College in Newton, Massachusetts.