Five men whose namesakes were famous Jewish personages share what it’s like to carry their names

It’s just a name. Or is it?

Is it satisfying, amusing, or annoying to come into a room and be introduced as “Moshe Feinstein” or “Ezra Attiya”? What’s it like to sign a check or fill out your child’s camp forms with a name everyone around you associates with a famous gadol? Five men whose namesakes were famous Jewish personages share what it’s like to carry their names

Akiva Eiger

Location: Boro Park
Profession: diamond industry
Namesake: Rav Akiva Eiger of Posen (1761–1837)
Quote: “I always think to myself — nu, you have such a name, did you learn enough today?

I’ve been meeting Rabbi Akiva Eiger for years, and not always in the beis medrash. I’ve met him walking the streets of Boro Park, a tall man with his head bent over. I’ve encountered him at a Downtown Brooklyn train station. I’ve even davened in shul several times next to the person carrying one of the most revered names our nation holds.

Rabbi Akiva Eiger, a Boro Park resident, is an eighth-generation ben achar ben from the great figure entitled by his generation of greats as a gaon. With his high fur kolpik and illuminative eyes, he even looks like his saintly ancestor, though his physical bearing would likely tower over the famously diminutive figure of the man whose kushiyos and piskei halachos are studiously labored over to this day.

“Baruch Hashem, I was zocheh to this name,” says Rabbi Eiger, who works in the diamond industry. “But it’s a tremendous responsibility. It’s too chashuv of a name to have, to be honest. It’s not an easy name to carry. I get used to it, but on the other hand I always think to myself — nu, you have such a name, did you learn enough today?” It demands a lot from me.”

The present-day Akiva Eiger’s genealogy reads like a seforim shrank. He is a son of Rav Ezriel Meir, son of Rav Mordechai Menachem Mendel, son of Rav Yehuda Leib, son of Rav Ezriel Meir — the last Lubliner Rebbe in that city — son of Rav Avraham, the Shevet Mi’Yehuda, son of Rav Yehuda Leib — known in the family and by many Polish chassidim as Leibel Shloime Akiva’s and the first Lubliner Rebbe — son of Rav Shlomo, who was a son of Rav Akiva Eiger.

Rav Akiva Eiger, who lived from 1761 to 1837, was a son of Rav Moshe Ginz, a son-in-law of the first Rav Akiva Eiger. His grandson took the family name of his maternal uncle, Rav Binyamin Wolf Eiger, when he wanted to study under him in the German city of Breslau and authorities did not allow in foreigners unless they were relatives with the same family name of a resident.

Even prior to Eiger, the family’s surname changed several times over the years. The original name was Ginz, but before that it was alternately Margolis, Schlesinger, and Yaffe. (Rav Akiva Eiger was a direct descendant of Rav Mordechai Yaffe, the Baal Halevushim.)

Rabbi Eiger says that when he was born, his grandfather, the previous Aleksander Rebbe of Boro Park, asked his son-in-law to add a second name from his side of the family. But his mechutan, noting that the bris would take place on the day before Rav Akiva Eiger’s yahrtzeit, said that there was something special about the name he wanted to give — Akiva. “My grandfather was taken aback to hear that, he couldn’t say anything to that,” Rabbi Eiger says.