of Leviticus under his head.”^6 As this description includes the element lacking
in Mah·zor Vitry, the naming of the child, it can serve to fill the lacunae in the
other sources.^7
Both the source in Sefer H·asidimand the source in Mah·zor Vitrydo not call
the ceremony by the name Hollekreisch or by any other name. The timing of
the ritual is also not clear. Mah·zor Vitrymentions that this ritual took place
around the time of the circumcision ceremony, while Sefer H·asidim does not
mention a specific time for the ceremony, although we can assume that a nam-
ing ceremony took place earlier rather than later. Only in fifteenth-century
sources do we find a specific name and time assigned to the ritual. They speak
of a naming ceremony in which an additional name was given to boys and a
name was given to girls. This name, at least in the case of boys was a shem h·ol,
a name that was not holy (kodesh).^8 R. Moses Mintz explains that the
Hollekreisch took place on the Sabbath that the parturient left her house—in
other words, approximately four to five weeks after birth. The name given at
the Hollekreisch is also sometimes called a shem Harisa—cradle name.^9
Some scholars have suggested that the act of naming the baby in the cradle
gave the ritual its name. They explained that the word Hollekreisch was com-
posed of two parts: Kreisch, meaning cradle or, in French, crèche, and holfrom
the Hebrew word h·ol.^10 This explanation, however, has no linguistic credibil-
ity. The medieval French word for cradlewas not the modern crèche, but rather
brez orbriç, a word that became the modern French berceau. This word ap-
pears a number of times in Rashi’s commentary on the Talmud.^11
Another explanation commonly given for the name Hollekreisch is based on
the comments of the fifteenth-century R. Moses Mintz. He said:
For after the parturient who gave birth to a girl leaves her house, it is a custom to
name the baby, and that naming is called Hallekreisch. I heard a reason from my
father, may his memory be blessed, who heard from his mentors, that the mean-
ing of Hallekreischis that they cry out at that time to the [female] baby a not holy
name and the same for a baby boy. For example if the “holy” name is Samuel and
the h·ol name is Zanvil, they call him Zanvil at that time, etc.... And Hallekreisch
is made up of two words, Halle from h·oland kreisch, meaning “to cry out.” In other
words, the shem h·ol that is cried out and announced, for in the language of Lower
Ashkenaz, they call a cry kreisch.^12This same explanation appears in the writings of other early modern authori-
ties. One of them, R. Israel b. Shalom Shakhna of Lublin (d. 1558), explains
that this custom is not the custom of the rabbis: “It is not the custom of Rab-
bis to give names to infants. Only children gather and lift up the baby and cry
out his not-holy name. And all this is called Hallekreisch.”^13 The same expla-
nation also appears at length in R. Joseph Neurlingen’s (1570 –1637) book
Yosef Omez·.^14
This suggestion, however, does not fit the ritual performance. If the mean-