re: #69 Vicious Babushka

The Hebrew for Angel of Death is Malakh Ha-mavet. The angel is Satan.

Being more educated than I in our religious beliefs and practices, perhaps you can tell me if my grandparents lied to me about a superstition (hey, dad lied about my sickly dog being sent to retire to a farm, and my brother’s overly aggressive dog being sent to Vietnam, they could have lied about this too)… they told me that

The reason Ashkenazis never name a kid junior, that they never name a kid after any living person, is because someday when the Angel of Death gets the name John Doe of the Los Angeles Does on his daily pickup list, he might take the younger one just to be spiteful. And that if you’ve named the child after somebody already dead, then it’s possible when the name comes up on the list, he might in error think “oh, got that one already,” and not bother stopping by for him.