USCJ Review - Spring 2007
What’s In a Name? From Gary Johnson to Gershon Weissman
I was born Gary Johnson, and now I am Gershon Weissman. Rabbi Gershon Weissman. I made my Hebrew name, Gershon, my official first name. Weissman, though, is another story.
To begin with, I was never entirely comfortable being named Johnson, although I did find it useful in some ways.
It certainly often was good for a laugh. When my congregants were asked their rabbi’s name, they would have to say “It’s Johnson.” Most people found that funny. This has been the story of my rabbinic career. So many more of the questions I’ve been asked have to do with my last name than about the rabbinic subjects I was trained and educated to answer.
My story is really about how a family went from Weissman to Katajansky to Johnson – to Weissman.
Through the centuries we Jews have had to change our names for many reasons. We are to be called by our Hebrew name at our bris or baby naming, at our bar or bat mitzvah, at our wedding, when we are called to the Torah, when we are a witness for a marriage ketubah, a conversion, or a divorce, and at our leviah, our funeral service. Then we are known as, say, Gershon Yechiel ben Yakov uMiryam – Gershon, son of my father Jack and mother Miriam. We use our first and middle Hebrew names.
During the period of the enlightenment in the 18th and 19th centuries, we took on last names to fit into the dominant custom and culture of the country in which we lived. We thereby became citizens of those countries. Many took names that were colors – Schwartz (black), Weiss (white), Green, Braun, Bluestein, Greenberg, or Greenstein. Many named themselves after a family profession – Schneider (tailor), Zuckerman (sugarman), or Bookbinder. Some took their names from places, as in Leipzig, London or Berlin. Halpern or Halperin originally was someone who came from Heilbronn in Wurttemberg; a Mel(t)zer can be a brewer or a person who came from Meltz; Stein can be a stone, a rock, or a marker; Sternberg is the name of 10 separate places in Germany. Names can come from precious stones, such as Finkelstein (diamond), or from animals, like Fuchs (fox). And there are so many more!
In the old country and in the new one, some people took on last names to avoid being known as Jews. George Burns was Nathan Birnbaum. Jack Benny was Benjamin Kubelsky.
Jews who immigrated to Israel changed their diaspora names to Hebrew ones. David Greene became David Ben Gurion (“son of a lion” or “son of might”). Many new Israelis preferred to have their names reflect a Jewish value or positive image, rather than the fairly meaningless Green or its like. Those names were chosen only to aid assimilation.
The irony of my name is that Johnson actually was a hindrance to my acceptance as a rabbi. Johnson would have been good for any other job in America. I applied and was rejected at a graduate program in Jewish education in New York because the committee that looked at my application assumed that I wasn’t Jewish. I received an apology and an automatic acceptance into the program for the following year when they were told that I was Jewish, and in fact was a rabbinic student. My mother-in-law, who has gotten a lot of mileage out of my name, tells the story that her daughter went all the way to Israel and with all the Jewish young men there, she had to end up with a goy named Johnson. (To be fair, my wife told her mother she had met “a wonderful guy named Gary Johnson who was a rabbinical student,” and her mother, a great, dramatic storyteller, enjoyed embellishing just a bit.)
When I was asked about my non-Jewish last name, I used to tell questioners what my father told me. In Russia, the name had been Katajansky. My grandfather Abraham Katajansky landed at Ellis Island with his family in 1906, and the customs officials there changed the family name to Johnson.
That story worked pretty well for a long time. When I took Hebrew classes at the University of California at Santa Barbara, I became friends with Dr. Hetzron, who taught Hebrew and Semitic languages there. (He had changed his name from Herzl to Hetzron.) He said, “Gary, I know that you’re Jewish, so where did you get the name Johnson?” I told him the story that my father told me – and then he told me that Katajansky also was a goyishe nomen, a gentile name, from Poland. I was taken aback to hear that, and so was my father.
My father, Jack Johnson, was the youngest of 10 Jewish Johnsons born to Abraham and Anna Johnson. Not all of the family lore made it down to him. So he called his eldest living sibling, his sister Bertha, who told us that the family name had been Weissman. It was changed to Katajansky when their father, Abraham Weissman, fought in the Russian-Japanese War in 1905. The Czar drafted Jews to serve in the military for 25 years. They were sent to the front lines, where they served as cannon fodder. Jewish lives were expendable. So when my grandfather’s fighting partner, a young man named Katajansky, was killed, my grandfather saw an opening, and he took it. Abraham Weissman took the dead soldier’s identity papers – and his identity. Using the name Katajansky, he, his wife, and their children – six at the time – fled Russia.
And then on Ellis Island, all the new Katajanskys became Johnsons.
When they heard that my name was Johnson, many people assumed that my father wasn’t Jewish. Many thought I was related to the well-known Jewish Johnson family from Minneapolis. (I’m not.) Many thought I was a convert. Of course, many people accepted my name. It didn’t bother them. Many of my congregants who have known me for decades actually are disappointed that my name is being changed from Johnson. They have grown to like my last name and will miss it. Some people in the community now think that our synagogue has hired a new rabbi. They wonder what happened to Rabbi Johnson.
My wife has always wanted me to change our last name. She too works in Jewish education and has always had her own challenges being “Johnson.” Then my children began having the same problem.
Two of our three children have made aliyah and settled in Israel. When my son Gavriel married Shalvi Schachter, the daughter of Rabbi Zalman Schachter- Shalomi, they moved to Tsfat. They were sure that they didn’t want to be called Johnson there, so they, too, became Weissmans. But modern life is complicated. Shalvi had been married before, to a man named Horowitz. They had a child, our step-grandson, who is named Noson; now Shalvi and Gavri have a daughter as well. The family gets mail addressed to Horowitz, Schachter, Johnson, and Weissman. Last year, when they came back to the United States for Pesach, each of the four had a different last name on his or her passport.
When my daughter Aliza was married in Jerusalem last September, we sent invitations to all the members of our synagogue, and to our colleagues and friends around the country. What were the last names of these two Jewishly observant young people? Johnson and McKibbon! My son-in-law’s father converted to Judaism before he married. So our son-in- law, Marc McKibbon, is now Moshe Dov McKibbon. Soon, though, he will adopt his mother’s maiden name, Neviloff. That will make their lives in Israel a little bit easier.
Our names do matter. We are Jewish. We are a part of a minority, but you can’t tell that by looking at us. No one knows we’re Jewish until we wear a kipah, speak Hebrew, or observe Jewish ritual in public.
Now, it will be easier for people to know that we are Jewish, just by hearing our names.
But it’s not quite that easy. I have begun introducing myself as Rabbi Weissman. Of course, people immediately ask me if I’m related to So-and-So Weissman. I say “No, my name was changed to Weissman recently.” “And what was your name before?” “Johnson.” “Johnson?!! Where’d you get that name?!”
Some things never do change.
Rabbi Gershon Weissman, ne Gary Johnson, is the rabbi of Beth Haverim in Agoura Hills, California.
