Robert Burt: repetition and insistence.

• Author: Bohmer, Martin
• Position: Yale Law School professor - Testimonial

"What's in a name?" Juliet wished there was nothing in it, but there was Romeo, a Montague. What's in Bo's name? It seems that here also there is nothing in it, but there is: a strange sound, a faint echo, a repetition. Robert Amsterdam Burt, Robert Burt, Bert Burt!

I have always wondered about that sound. It may have been my foreign ear that picked up something nobody ever realized was there. So I cautiously asked Linda about it a few days ago and she answered with this story, in fact, with Bo's story about his own name--because, as she correctly points out, with Bo there is always a story.

It goes like this: Bo's mother liked the looks of an actor named Barry and decided to give her son his name, but as soon as she saw the looks of her son she decided otherwise. Not Barry anymore, but Robert. And she added her family name, Amsterdam, in between her son's and her husband's names, thus hiding the repetition: Bert Burt. This echo in his name sounds like someone calling him insistently, someone eager to get his attention, to engage or to reengage in conversation with Bo. One has to wonder how such a calling inscribed in your name would affect your life.

Although Bo was my J.S.D. supervisor, I was never his student-never a formal one, anyway. I only sat for a couple of months in his famous Book of Job course. That transforming experience is still with me, and I am indebted to Bo and Jim (1) for it. Now we have a book, In the Whirlwind, where many of those wonderful insights we learned about in the classroom are displayed for everyone to enjoy in print. (2)

They are there to be found and especially one: the rhythmic succession of fateful interactions between God and Humanity. God's longing for companionship, Humanity's attempt at autonomy. God's anger, Humanity's expulsion. God's arbitrariness, Humanity's anger. God's punishment, Humanity's guilt. God's forgiveness, Humanity's doubts. God's promises, Humanity's hope. And so on. Bo underlined this ongoing cycle, not the fact that it was a cycle, but the fact that it kept going on and on.

Whenever the cycle seems to have stopped, the narrative of the Bible uses repetition to start the process again. In the beginning, for example, instead of one, final attempt at creation, we have two, tentative, unstable Geneses. When the first did not work out, God did not keep resting, but insisted and started again. And then he could not resume resting; he had to deal with Humanity, and the task was not easy...