Is God’s real name ‘Anochi?’ Author and reviewer disagree

Rabbi Wayne Dosick, The Real Name of God: Embracing the Full Essence of the Divine; Publisher: Inner Traditions; Date 2012; ISBN-10: 1594774730: 224 pages; Price $19.95. Rating: ****

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Rabbi Wayne Dosick responds to the review below: https://www.sdjewishworld.com/2012/12/05/r-dosick-responds-to-book-review-of-the-real-name-of-god/ 
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By Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel

CHULA VISTA, California — Hassidic interpretations have an endearing quality that is often ignored by the reductionist style of critical biblical scholars. Over the last twenty years or so, we have seen a number of new-age styled Jewish expositions of theology that attempt to articulate a meaningful spirituality to a generation of Jewish and non-Jewish seekers. In some ways, Rabbi Wayne Dosick’s The Real Name of God: Embracing the Full Essence of the Divine, is reminiscent of Art Green’s Eheyeh: A Kabbalah for Tomorrow, and David Cooper’s God is a Verb.

Modern Jews tend to be the most ambivalent of all the modern religions when it comes to the thorny subject of God. Speaking about God for Jews is never an easy undertaking—and it is actually much harder for many rabbis, who frankly, live in an agnostic universe. This is the audience that Rabbi Dosick wishes to attract.

In the beginning of his book, The Real Name of God: Embracing the Full Essence of the Divine, Rabbi Wayne Dosick poses the central problem many modern people have of God:

• [N]oble aspects of God are far too often overshadowed by a God who is—in great part—a rigid, militaristic, hierarchal, male authoritarian. It is a God who brings plagues, and kills firstborn; throws temper tantrums, and metes out harsh punishments; opens the ground to swallow up opponents, and makes war to obliterate enemy nations. It is a God who gets angry, is jealous and vengeful, makes outrageous demands, and—frankly—behaves very badly. It is a God in whose “name” –in later manifestations—is sanctioned evildoing and atrocity . . . It is a God, who for many, holds the image of an old man with a long white beard, sitting on a Heavenly throne exacting judgment and writing, frighteningly, in the “Book of Life or Death.” (pp. 4-5)

Of course the God he is referring to is none other than everyone’s favorite anthropomorphic deity—YHWH! Harold Bloom, in his Jesus and YHWH: The Names Divine likens Yahweh to King Lear, who like the Shakespearean personality is best known for his irascibility. Dosick candidly admits in his epilogue, “Knowing what I now know about the biblical name for God, I can no longer be a YHWH-ist” (p. 153).

The author’s Promethean attitude attempts to dethrone the importance of YHWH for the modern reader. For Dosick, YHWH is only one of many divine names of the Bible. According to Dosick—each divine name represents aspects of God. Dosick suggests that one way to think about God is to imagine a beachball—which consists of many different colored panels.  Every name of God in the Bible is analogous to the colored panel, yet the beach ball is obviously more than the individual panels.

In his exposition of the various divine names, Dosick argues that the name Elohim represents “the office of God on earth,” while the name El Shaddai (traditionally rendered as “God Almighty”) personifies God’s “mothering aspect.” God reserves His Name YHWH for confronting Pharaoh.

But assuming that each name of God is relational, does God really have a name that transcends the specific manifestations of divine power?

Dosick’s answer is daring and simple.

He advances a truly novel theory: God’s real name  is not YHWH, or Elohim, or El, but happens to be Anochi—I am, which he defines as the “I-Source,” which includes two aspects of God—immanence and the transcendence.  Dosick emphasizes that “We are of God, but we are not God.” This idea, serves to unite objective and subjective experience of God.

According to Dosick, there are important ethical implications to this new theological interpretation of God’s Name. If I know I am of God and you are of God, we must treat each other as though we are OF God. If we treat everything as Godlike, the world is a better place. Once we know that God is the Totality, then, we know that God is the transcendent God of history and is also the God of breath, soul, and heart. God is the only entity that can create out of nothing.

After I read his book, I found myself asking: Is Dosick actually correct about Anochi? Does the linguistic evidence he marshals support his novel theology?

As a theological midrash, The Real Name of God: Embracing the Full Essence of the Divine is a novel theological exposition of the author’s concept of God.

Beyond that, I would have to say: No

To begin with, in Biblical Hebrew, Anochi (אָנֹכִי  ) is not a name of God, it is a 1^st person singular pronoun. Pronouns are not the same as Names.[1]

In contrast to אֲנִי  (Ani) Anochi is always used for emphasis. In the Cain and Abel story, Cain asks: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Gen. 4:9)The biblical narrator’s choice of Anochi over Ani, is instructive. Anochi adds tonality, as if to say: “Am I supposed to be my brother’s keeper?”[2] In terms of the Decalogue, God speaks to the Israelites, “I am the LORD your God,” but this translation is actually inaccurate. The text should be rendered, “I, YHWH, am, your God” (Exod. 20:2). The point of this statement serves to illustrate that YHWH is God’s Name—not Anochi.

In terms of Biblical Hebrew, the independent first personal singular pronoun allows the speaker (e.g., Cain, God, Moses, and so on) to inject himself/herself emphatically into the discussion. This all depends upon the degree of personal involvement as well as the circumstances of the conversation. Typically, the use of Anochi (אָנֹכִי) occurs in earlier biblical texts more so than post-exilic biblical texts.[3]

Often, the individual speaking as Anochi (אָנֹכִי) wishes to convey the seriousness of one’s personal condition.[4] First person singular personal pronouns like this express powerlessness, astonishment, and indignation.[5] Sometimes, they reflect the speaker’ self-effacing and submissive attitude.[6]

In light of the above, let us return to the original question: What is God’s real Name? The answer is nuanced. When Moses asks God:

• “But,” said Moses to God, “when I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ if they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what am I to tell them?”(Exod. 3:13).

God informs Moses that God’s real Name is אֶהְיֶה  (ʾěh∙yěh = “I am”), when it is used, the focus of this Divine Name is on God’s Presence[7], care, concern, and relationship.[8] In terms of the third person, God’s Name is unequivocally clear:

God spoke further to Moses, “Thus shall you say to the Israelites: The LORD (YHWH), the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, has sent me to you. “This is my name forever!” (Exod. 3:15).

This verse alone would certainly suggest that the Divine Name of YHWH is more than just a panel on some theological beach ball. The name has much more significance than Dosick admits. He cannot escape or exorcise the ghost of YHWH from the Bible in his book—no matter how hard he tries.

Other Considerations

There are several questions that one can raise on the author’s overall thesis. Dosick believes that YHWH reflects too much of a human conception of God and as a Name, it is inherently limited. The violence that is frequently associated with YHWH in the Torah makes it near impossible for Dosick to identify with such an anthropomorphic deity.

Dosick explains:

• Every name we have for God—including the Bible’s “main name” —YHWH—reflects one of God’s aspects, attributes, or characteristics. None embodies the wholeness, the totality, the full essence of God. (p. 8).

There is a strange paradox in Dosick’s God-wrestling that I am not sure whether the author himself was aware of in his writing. The pure and ethical conception Dosick associates with Anochi still suffers from some of the negative associations that exist in the YHWH-ist perspective he eschews.

In one passage one can see the discomfort he has associating Anochi as the destroyer of humankind:

• The very first time in Torah where Anochi is spoken in the voice of the Divine is when God announces that a flood will destroy the world. Anochi brings creation, and because of the free-will corruption and debased conduct of the people, Anochi could bring destruction. This is a moment of such great significance that it cannot be left to a representative to announce, “For in seven days’ time, Anochi, I-Source will make it rain upon the Earth (Gen 7:4) — (p. 35).

Dosick refuses to admit that Anochi can be just as destructive as YHWH in this instance. Everything he finds objectionable to the Yahwist perspective ought to be equally destructive to the Anochi  perspective he wishes to champion. Either way you slice it, one cannot avoid the problem of Anochi and omnicide. Anochi’s behavior in the Flood narrative led the biblical narrator to admit—God made a mistake in destroying the world with a flood:

WHEN the LORD (YHWH) smelled the sweet odor, he said to himself: “Never again will I doom the earth because of man, since the desires of man’s heart are evil from the start; nor will I ever again strike down all living beings, as I have done (Gen. 8:21)

It would follow that YHWH actually shows more of an ethical conscience than the Anochi model Dosick would have us accept.

Does this criticism invalidate his entire book?

Not necessarily.

Dosick’s book is a thoroughly thoughtful and original exposition. You may not agree with everything he proposes in his book, but the God-wrestling that Dosick performs in The Real Name of God: Embracing the Full Essence of the Divine is well worth the price of purchasing this original theology of God—one that fits with the best of the neo-Hassidic expositions of our time.

In the final analysis, God-wrestling is something that every Jewish person does—whether he wants to admit it or not. In one well-known Hasidic story, Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev, is said to have placed God on trial during one Rosh Hashanah for permitting so much suffering to befall his community. A similar narrative is mentioned in Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night. In recounting his experience in the Holocaust, he tells of the inmates in Auschwitz who call God to judgment and issue a condemnation for permitting evil to operate freely in our world. A surprising theological tradition has God say: “You may hate Me and revile Me, but you cannot ignore Me.”

Our generation needs people to articulate their spiritual journey. This is especially important for rabbis—regardless whether one agrees with everything that an author says, Rabbi Wayne Dosick is at least honest enough to bare his spiritual odyssey for all of us to listen with respect.