I found Ira Buckman’s letter of February 25, “A Pastry by Any Other Name” very interesting because I had a slightly different but similar thought, about publicizing our worst enemies. We are commanded to forget Amalek, but do it by bringing its name up year after year for millennia. We scorn Haman by using the very mention of his name as a source of frivolity, feasting, drinking and merriment, year after year for centuries. We utter Hitler’s name by adding yimach shemo to it, while constantly referring to him.

I think we Jews should stop treating these evil monsters like wrestling villains or rock stars, by minimizing their names, rather than constantly mentioning them. The descendants of these fiendish anti-Semites may in fact dwell in their notoriety, for it is an adage in show business that any publicity, even the bad kind, is still good.

With this in mind, I think our rabbis and communal leaders should stop calling Hitler (sic) by his name and just refer to him by a pseudonym, like “the evil one.” While his name and savagery won’t completely disappear in the secular history books, his name may eventually be relegated to the dustbins of Jewish history. Likewise, while we are commanded to mention the names Amalek and Haman, we should read them quickly in an undertone, like we read curses, rather than aloud and conspicuously. It is time we really shamed their names, not constantly bring attention to them.