[Avodah] "Hashem" as God's name

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

Just over a year ago, R' Yonatan Kaganoff opened this thread, asking:

> I have been looking for some time into the origins of the
> recent use of "Hashem" as God's name in colloquial speech.
> For an example, my two year old says that I am going to
> shul to daven to "Hashem". I was told that fifty years
> ago, an Orthodox Jewish child would say that he davened to
> "God."
> At this point the use of "Hashem" to refer to God is
> fairly ubiquitous in English speaking Orthodox circles.
> Does anyone know when this began?? And when it became the
> de facto way of referring to God?

At that time, several people pointed to Kitzur Shulchan Aruch 6:3, but nothing older than that, and then the discussion veered off into related topics.

I'd just like to add another data point, that of the Seder Avodah in today's musaf, in which we tell of the Kohen Gadol's viduy on Yom Kippur:

"V'kach haya omer: Ana haShaym, chatasi... Ana vaShaym, kaper na..."

The text seems based on Mishna Yoma 6:2, where it is clear that what the Kohen Gadol actually said was the four-letter Shem Hameforash. Yet the machzorim, mishnayos, and gemara spell it as shin-mem (and not as heh-apostrophe). This is *not* an example of where "shaym" means "reputation" (as R' Micha Berger explains the phrases "kiddush haSheym" and "chilul haShaym"), but clearly seems to be a filler for the Four-Letter Name.

This doesn't really answer the OP's question of when it entered *colloquial* speech. Still, I think it is notable that the mishna et al chose to use heh-shin-mem rather than aleph-dalet-nun-yod.

Akiva Miller

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