Jewish Spirituality - Tumblr Posts

Ashkenazi jews generally don’t name their children after the living. I don’t know how or why that tradition was established- but it is considered very bad luck.

I think the idea is that having two people in the same family/vicinity with the same name might lead the angel of death to get confused and take the wrong one.

What you might not know is that Ashkenazim don’t just avoid certain names to make things easier for the angel of death, we also pick certain names specifically to confuse him.

For example, you might name a baby that is born very sick “Alter” (lit. Old) in the hopes that the angel of death will pass over the child until they grow old.

After a near death experience, Ashkenazim sometimes change their first (Hebrew or Yiddish) names to entirely new ones. That way, if the angel of death checks back to see if he has succeeded, he won’t find anyone by the name he’s looking for alive, so he’ll move on.

I’ve never met a Jew who believes in the angel of death literally- but I enjoy the idea of an angel of death that is actually just swamped in paperwork and very easily confused.