What’s in a name? According to Tirtza Jotkowitz, an attorney specializing in halachic estate planning, plenty! She traces her personal spiritual legacy back to her namesake in this week’s parshah: Tirtza bas Tzelafchad, who, along with her sisters, was among the first Jews to be concerned with the Torah’s laws of inheritance.
According to the Arizal the nature of a person can be discovered by analyzing that person’s name. In fact a close look at the word for neshamah (soul) reveals that hidden between the letters nun and hey is the Hebrew word for “name” — shem. This inner dimension is obvious in the name of Tirtza Jotkowitz an attorney whose specialty is “halachic estate planning in a secular world.”
Like her namesake in Tanach — Tirtza bas Tzelafchad — Tirtza Jotkowitz has been interested in the legal issues concerning the distribution of real property and monetary assets after a person’s death since she was a young woman.
“You could say that an interest in family inheritance law is in my genes” she says when we meet in her Jerusalem apartment. But even though the interest might be in her genes back in 1968 a career in law wasn’t considered a suitable choice for a young frum woman — especially one who came from a long line of distinguished litvish rabbanim and chassidic rebbes.
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Tirtza’s apartment in central Jerusalem has an old-new feel to it: new because she and her husband Rabbi Mordechai Jotkowitz moved in to the brand-new building only last September when they made aliyah to Israel from Monsey New York; old because one of the walls showcases a portrait gallery of distinguished faces that provide a link to her family’s past.
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