Connecting Past Present and Future

And God spoke to Moses, and said to him: I am the Lord and I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as “God Almighty,” but My name haShem I did not make known to them.             Exodus 6:2-3

          It should be noted that neither the Jewish Publication Society translation nor that of Rabbi Shimshon Refael Hirsch translates the holy four letter name of God, which is the ineffable name, never pronounced as it is written.

          Our Sages teach us that the Tetragrammaton implies God’s eternity. Indeed, the Name contains the letters which spell the Hebrew words haya (“was”), hoveh (“is”) and yihiyeh (“will be”), encompassing past present and future. However, while the three words collectively contain all four letters of the Name, none of the three does individually.     My father commented that this teaches us that God’s name can be complete only when we unite past present and future.

          One of the great medieval Jewish poets wrote:

The past is gone The future yet to be The present a mere eye blink

(I regret my inability to render a poetic translation of the Hebrew.)

          Time has meaning only when the fleeting present is used to connect the past and future.

Rabbi Akiva taught “eternity” (haNetzaḥ) [II Chronicles 29:11] refers to Jerusalem.                            Babylonian Talmud, Brachot 58a

          Rabbi Joseph Dov Soloveichik explained that the definition of eternity is the convergence of all time, the simultaneous existence of past, present and future. Rabbi Akiva has taught us that the Jewish past present and future are destined to meet specifically in Jerusalem.

          Returning to my father’s point, we can add that when all of time converges in Jerusalem, God’s name will be completed.