Jews not writing or pronouncing God's name...

[bilby]

Look. I'd had a lovely supper, and all I said to my wife was, 'That piece of avocado on toast was good enough for Jehovah.'

 

[Swammerdami]

I still find the following almost peculiar.

[True Story]
There's a restaurant here in Chiang Mai which has "Toast Yahweh" on the menu. (It's avocado slices on toast.) I was shocked to see it! Would Jews take offense? They certainly wouldn't want to order it audibly.

Over the next few days I asked several Westerners if they'd heard of "Yahweh." There was only one Yes; and it came from a guy who soon started weeping about his relatives killed by Nazis in Belgium. (I was amazed few had even heard of Yahweh

I asked [the owner] about "Toast Yahweh." She'd had her Chiang Mai restaurant for 14 years but before that operated a restaurant in Honolulu. A regular customer, who called himself "Yahweh," ordered toast with avocado slices regularly; others said "I'll have what he's having;" so she added it to the menu, naming it after the guy.

Why did the guy call himself Yahweh? Some sort of jerk maybe? Obviously he spelled the name for her since most would write "Ya-Way" on hearing it. And in 14 years nobody mentioned to the restaurant owner that Yahweh was the Sacred Unutterable Name of God? (Then again, I knew but didn't tell her.)

I think my further comments were useful and/or interesting:

Miscellaneous comments:

(1) Perhaps the earliest reference to the name "Yahweh" comes from 15th-century Egyptian lists:

Yhw (in) the land of the Shasu

Shasu was a place (or ethnic group) to the south or southeast of the Dead Sea; this is at or near Edom, the nation allegedly founded by Esau, Jacob's brother. (Cite: Redford, who cites Giveon's Shosou for the early 18th-dynasty origin of the "lists from Soleb and Amarah".)

(2) It was often thought that knowing the name of a person, god or demon gave power over that entity. This is illustrated in the New Testament when Jesus does an exorcism:

And [Jesus] asked [the demon], What is thy name? And he answered, saying, My name is Legion: for we are many.

(3) In addition to the Torah, uses of "I am that I am" are found in the writings of Shakespeare and of Edward de Vere. (What other writers used this phrase?)

And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?
And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.
And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, the Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.

'Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed,
When not to be, receives reproach of being,
And the just pleasure lost, which is so deemed,
Not by our feeling, but by others' seeing.
For why should others' false adulterate eyes
Give salutation to my sportive blood?
Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,
Which in their wills count bad what I think good?
No, I am that I am, and they that level
At my abuses, reckon up their own,
I may be straight though they themselves be bevel;
By their rank thoughts, my deeds must not be shown
Unless this general evil they maintain,
All men are bad and in their badness reign.

Near or far off, well won is still well shot;
And I am I, howe'er I was begot.

What do I fear? Myself? There's none else by.
Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I.

[In the postscript of a letter to Lord Burghley] But I pray, my Lord, leave that course, for I mean not to be your ward nor your child. I serve her Majesty, and I am that I am, and by alliance near to your Lordship, but free, and scorn to be offered that injury to think I am so weak of government as to be ruled by servants, or not able to govern myself. If your Lordship take and follow this course, you deceive yourself, and make me take another course than yet I have not thought of. Wherefore these shall be to desire your Lordship, if that I may make account of your friendship, that you will leave that course as hurtful to us both.

By the way, the 2nd reddened phrase is similar to another piece of Shakespeare text:

No, you unnatural hags!
I will have such revenges on you both
That all the world shall- I will do such things-
What they are yet, I know not; but they shall be
The terrors of the earth! ...

Yes I AM disappointed no one clicked Like on this post.