Transcript
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Hi, this is Rabbi David Wolpe with the
question and answer series.
Chana says, "I was just wondering why we
call God Hashem."
Uh
So, one of the top 10 commandments of
all time is thou shalt not take the
Lord's name in vain.
Yeah?
We're very careful about that. We go out
of our way not to mention Hashem's name.
Therefore, if you look in the Torah and
you see Hashem's name, you will see that
it is something we do not pronounce.
There are a group called the blank
witnesses who have no problem saying
God's name, at least in the English. We
don't say that.
Only the Kohen Gadol in the Beit
Hamikdash
Ha Kohanim
right?
He would say Yud Kay Vav Kay out loud.
We don't even spell it.
When we say it, we say Yud Kay
instead of letter Hay, Vav Kay. We don't
even want to spell it.
We don't pronounce it.
So, therefore, when we are doing
something holy, we substitute that name
of Hashem with the name Ado
which ends, as we know, Noy.
Which basically means my master.
Yeah?
And
we say that during davening. We don't
even say that when it's not during
davening or in Kedusha.
We say Adoshem.
But even that's too close to the real
thing.
So, therefore, the custom is to just
when we want to refer to God, to use the
term the name.
I'm not going to say the name of God.
I'm just going to say Hashem.
It used to be a custom that people would
write on top of a paper base hey for
Baruch Hashem. There were some people
who didn't even want to write that hey.
And so they
uh change it to
base samech daleth which is Aramaic
bisiyata dish maya
which means
uh with the help of heaven.
And so that's how far we go to be
careful from saying Hashem's name.
And uh
we say when we need it, when we're
teaching a kid how to say a bracha, we
teach him how to say it.
And then we say, "No, no, don't say it."
But when a kid is learning for his bar
mitzvah, they're very careful. Don't
practice going Baruch atah Hashem cuz
that's what you'll do when you're up
there. So we tell him, "Practice the
brachas using Shem Hashem cuz you'll
forget and you'll make that mistake."
But we're very careful with taking the
Lord's name in vain.
This is Dovid Olanski with our question
and answer series.
