 So we know that there are various names of God in the Bible, but there is one special name, the essential holy name of God's essence, which is the four-letter tetragrammaton spelled in the Hebrew with the Hebrew letters Yud, Hey, and Vov, Hey. And together these letters permute into three words, Hayah, Hoveh, and Yeheeah. Hayah he was, Hoveh he is, Yeheeah he will be. In other words, this is the name that expresses God's eternal existence, which is totally beyond the realm that we are able to understand. Human beings can understand many things, but to understand eternity, going back infinitely and going into the future infinitely, we're not able to grasp. When I was in high school, my eighth grade physics teacher told us that space goes on for gazillions of miles, and I remember sitting in this class trying to imagine traveling into outer space and it never really ending, and I started crying in the middle of the class because my brain started to hurt. It was painful to think about just something going on forever, and we know that space is not forever, but God is forever. God is eternal and the idea of understanding this kind of infinity and this kind of eternity is really beyond our comprehension, beyond our ability to grasp. So we know that this holy name of God is never pronounced as it is written. We don't pronounce God's holy four-letter name as it is written, even in prayer, even when we are reading the Bible, and during these times when we come across God's name, we pronounce his name as Adonoi. Now that's not what it says, but that's how we read it. Adonoi meaning the master. The only exception to this was in the holy temple in Jerusalem when it was standing, the Torah states in Deuteronomy chapter 12, in three different places there, chapter 12 verse 5, verse 11, verse 21, the Torah says God, your Lord, will appoint a place for you to link his name there. There is a place where you're going to actually link God's name, meaning you express God's name in this place. So in general, we never pronounce God's name as it is written. The only exception was in the holy temple of Jerusalem, and that took place each day when the priest pronounced the priestly benediction, which is found in the book of Numbers chapter 6. Right, may the Lord bless you and keep you, etc. So there the holy name of God was pronounced, and then on the day of Atonement, on Yom Kippur, the high priest recited God's name ten times. Other than those two exceptions, the name of God, the tetragrammaton, is never pronounced as it is written. Now when we refer to this special name of God, outside the context of prayer, or outside the context of actually reading the Bible, again in those situations, when we see God's name in the Torah, or in our prayer books, we pronounce it Adonoi. But if we're referring to God's holy name outside those contexts of prayer or reading the Bible, then we pronounce it customarily by just saying Hashem, which is Hebrew for the name. We simply refer to God's name as Hashem, the name. Now I mentioned that there are other names of God, and you might say these are less holy, although there are holy in their own right. And these other names of God are pronounced as they are written. Again, only during prayer or only during the reading of the Torah. One of these names, for example, is Elohim. So when you're reading the Torah, when you're praying, you would be able to pronounce that name as it is written. Otherwise, what we usually do is alter it slightly, and we might say something like Elohim. One reason that God's essential name is never pronounced is based upon a verse in Exodus chapter three, verse 15, where God says, This is my name for eternity. This is my name for eternity. Again, referring to the tetragrammaton. But the oral Torah reads this verse as This is my name, and it should be concealed. If you read Hebrew, you'll notice that the text of the Bible only has consonants. There are no vowels in the Torah itself. So you can easily take a word like le olam and read it as le aleem. And so this, according to the Talmud, is one of the reasons why we don't pronounce God's name as it is written, because God commands us that his name should be concealed. Another reason that we, again, are careful about pronouncing not just this special name of God, the tetragrammaton, but really pronouncing other names of God as well, unless necessary, is that the Torah says in Deuteronomy chapter 28, verse 58, you must fear this glorious and awesome name of God, your Lord, that we are supposed to treat God's name with tremendous awe and reverence. And this trepidation is based upon the third of the Ten Commandments, which states, you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. Now, the most basic understanding of this verse refers to a senseless oath using God's name. But by extension, our rabbis teach that it includes all expressions of God's name, again, except for when exceptions are made according to God's instructions. So one of the things that we understand about respecting God's holy name is that in the very same way that we do not refer to our parents by their first names, according to Jewish law, you're not allowed to call your mother or father by their first name. So we don't use God's special name either. Again, unless it was when he specified it. But this is a matter of respect. A way of showing respect to God is not to be overly familiar with his name and not to treat it lightly. As I mentioned before, this special four letter name of God describes his eternal essence that is totally beyond our ability to comprehend. So by not pronouncing God's name, it evokes this idea of how utterly other and holy he truly is. So therefore, when the prophets speak, and this comes up frequently in the Bible, the prophets speak about the Jewish people making God's name known throughout the world. What does that mean? So does it mean we're supposed to teach the nations of the world to recite God's name? We were told not to recite it. So what does it mean when it says that we're to make God's name known in the world? What it refers to is publicizing to the world about who God is. Publicizing to the world that God is the creator of absolutely everything in existence and that God's providence and supervision extends to everything that he created. That's what it means for us to make his name known to the world. It means to make his reality known to the world. And the idea of praising God's name, what does it mean when the Torah tells us, the prophets say, we're to praise God's name in the world. So it means that we're to be thankful and have gratitude and extol God for everything he does for us and for the world. That's the essence of what it means to praise God's name. It means to praise his reality, to praise his actions in the world, to be thankful for every single thing that God does. That is our mandate. That is the mandate of the Bible, which teaches us to always be praising God's name. It means that we must be thankful for everything that God does for us.