habakkuk and david

Habakkuk and David

By David Verveer

I am the third son of a Jewish family, born a half year before Holland was overrun by the Germans. In the Dutch Jewish tradition, the male children were called after their grandfathers and females after their grandmothers. The third child was named after one of the uncles or aunts, respectively the newborn's gender, who untimely had passed away, but when I was born, nobody had passed away (two years later, they were all killed in the gas chambers) but at that time, we were a healthy normative family, and I needed urgently a name, or else they could not perform the circumcision sermon, as this is a written contract of the newborn with God himself. Remember, in those times, only the form of the belly and grandmother wisdom, were able to prophesize the gender before birth.

M y parents, far from religious, however considered the traditions important to them. They decided that the name should be biblical, but the bible is a very large book, with many name possibilities.

They decided to pick the name with the help of a pin prick in the bible, the nearest by name would be my name for life time.

As my mother did not read Hebrew, they had a bible that was a Dutch translation of both the old (our) and the new (Christian) bible, and the first pin prick fall in the Christian section, and was ignored. Than came the second pin prick, which fall on the name of Habakkuk, one of the Jewish prophets.

I don't know if you remember the American song, of a fellow who was named Sue, who looked for his dad, in order to kill him, because the name he gave his son. I nearly was in the same peril, as Habakkuk is hardly a suitable calling name for a boy, how would I be called in short Habby or Kuky. In Dutch nor in English, it doesn't sound nice, and even though, Shakespeare had written, "what is in a name", my parents had mercy on me, and pin-picked again, with the result of finding David.

I am not sure that I (unlike most), consider David a roll model, as he was a sex maniac, acted like a modern Israeli president and raped Bathsheba (a married woman, who he kidnapped), wrote pornographic poetry, (it is a good thing that most people through the ages are illiterate, or learned the Song of Songs in a language they did not understand)

But, the name of David was chosen, the butcher was called in, who shortened my pin to a reduced Jewish size, and since then, I try to persuade everybody (with apparently little success) to call me David. It started with my mother, in a game, she said that my name is "Otofantje" (a play on little olifant (D) elephant (E), on which I answered that my name is not "Otofantje" but David.

When we went into hiding, and I was separated from my family, they (my rescuers), tried to give me a less Jewish sounding name, but all of the names I rejected with the same game I had played with my mother, until I got tired or accepted the slight variation from David to Daantje (small Daniel) a popular name in Holland.

After the war, my family and friends continued to call me Daan or Daantje, and even though I tried everything to get them to call me David, I never succeeded.

Then, 19 year old, I arrived at the kibbutz, and one of the members said for fun, that my nickname will be "Dauwish" (an Arab form from David), if I would not have reacted on it, it would never had caught on, but in my stupidity I protested again and again, that my name in David, without any success. Today there are still people who call my Daan, Dauwish is forgotten, and of course, Habakkuk only a threat from the past, but who was Habakkuk, what do we know about that gentleman? I looked it up in Google.

This 7th century Judean prophet foresaw the rise of Chaldea (Babylon) and prophesied that God would use it to punish and refine Judah. He is among the prophets who began to see that the impending judgment was both for God's glory as well as Judah's purification as a people. He is also known as the prophet of justification by faith alone (Heb. 2:4). The third chapter of Habakkuk is, in fact, a poetic prayer or psalm of faith in God.

Practically nothing is known about Habakkuk's personal history, except for what can be inferred from the text of his book, which consists of five oracles about the Chaldeans (Babylonians) and a song of praise to God. Since the Chaldean rise to power is dated c. 612 BC, it is assumed he was active about that time, making him an early contemporary of Jeremiah and Zephaniah. Jewish sources, however, do not group him with those two prophets, who are often placed together, so it is possible that he was slightly earlier than they. Because the final chapter of his book is a song, it is sometimes assumed in Jewish tradition that he was a member of the tribe of Levi, which served as musicians in Solomon's Temple. According to the Zohar (Volume 1, page 8b) Habakkuk is the boy born to the Shunamite woman through Elisha's blessing.

Habakkuk seems to have died in many places, and his grave can be found all over the place, from Jerusalem, Galilee, even Iran.

Shunam is an Arab village in the heart of the scenic Lower Galilee. It is made up of crowded collections of stone homes separated by narrow alleyways. The village is in the Yizrael Valley, encircled by the mountains of the Lower Galilee.

A mausoleum in the city of Toyserkan in the west of Iran is also believed to be Habakkuk's burial place. It is protected by Iran's Cultural Heritage Organization. The Organization's guide to the Hamedan Province states that Habakkuk was believed to be a guardian to the Temple of Solomon, and that he was captured by the Babylonians and remained in their prison for some years. After being freed by Cyrus the Great, he went to Ecbatana and remained there until he died, and was buried somewhere nearby, in what is today Toyserkan.

The Zohar is widely considered the most important work of Kabala, Jewish mysticism. It is a mystical commentary on the Torah (the five books of Moses), written in medieval Aramaic. It contains a mystical discussion of the nature of God, the origin and structure of the universe, the nature of souls, sin, and redemption, good and evil, and related topics.

And like everything else, it is all connected in a big historical mixture for example, the singer Madonna beliefs in the Kabala, and her adopted African son is called David, pure accidental, of course not, it is all written in the books.