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| The Birds by Georges Braque |
“You also have a Jewish first name,” my mother told me. “It’s Tzipa.”
“Tzipa?” I asked, trying to reproduce the completely unfamiliar sound I was hearing.
“Yes, Tzipa. She was grandma’s sister who died.”
“Oh,” I said “Okay.”
There we were, sitting together on the couch in the light-filled living room of our brand-new house, up on a hillside in a canyon in the Santa Monica Mountains in Los Angeles, California, and I was young enough to simply accept the mystifying information that in addition to my English first name, Nina, I had a “Jewish” first name, Tzipa, without asking any questions. But I always remembered what my mother told me. Even as the years passed and I never heard anyone call me Tzipa (my relatives called me Ninala or Ninatchka), I always remembered that name.
I also believed that no one else I knew had two first names. I didn’t realize then that it is very common for Jewish people to have a Hebrew name in addition to their name in the language of the country where they were living, and that their Hebrew names were not just second names in another language, but they were spiritual names in “God’s holy language.” I missed out on learning that, I think, because my parents as well as my grandparents were not religious, so I never went to synagogue or Hebrew school.
So that made me think that it was only me who had a secret name. It was like a magpie surprised me with a gift, dropping a small shiny object at my feet, and having no idea what to do with it but not wanting to get rid of it, I put it in a box with other precious objects. And I took that box along with me with every move I ever made, from city to city and even from one country to another.
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