The pearl in Peninnah

Almost exactly a year ago, in these pages, I wrote about my marriage collapsing when I discovered how completely I had been deceived by my then husband. I don’t want to retell that story here but there’s something about it that I understand differently now. 

On the first day of Rosh Hashanah, we read in the Haftarah the story of Elkanah and his two wives, Hannah and Peninnah. 

Hannah has no children. Peninnah does, and repeatedly provokes Hannah because she is childless. Hannah is devastated. She goes to the sanctuary at Shiloh and prays so intensely that Eli, the priest, at first thinks she is drunk. She asks G-d for a son and promises that if she is given one, she will dedicate him to G-d’s service. That child is Samuel, who later becomes one of Israel’s great prophets and anoints both Saul and David as kings. 

Ever since I became aware of the story, I have not particularly liked Peninnah, which was slightly unfortunate as Peninnah is my Hebrew name. 

Traditionally, Jewish girls are given their Hebrew names soon after they are born. For whatever reason, that did not happen with me. So I was given one when I had my Batmitzvah. I remember sitting in front of the rabbi who consulted a book with English names on one side and Hebrew names on the other. Paula became Peninnah. 

Earlier this year, my sister was visiting from England and we arranged a Jewish naming ceremony for her two young daughters. I decided to take part too. I had always felt my Hebrew name had not been chosen with much meaning, and the story of Peninnah troubled me. 

I started reading about other Hebrew names and came across a deeper Talmudic interpretation of Peninnah. The biblical story tells us she provoked Hannah because she was childless. But the Talmud says she acted “for the sake of heaven”, trying to push Hannah towards prayer. 

It does not make the cruelty disappear, but it did make me look at the story differently. It was when Hannah reached complete anguish that she cried out to G-d in the way she did. 

There was another detail I could not get away from: my sister’s Hebrew name is Hannah. 

Peninnah also means pearl. 

A pearl starts with something small that gets inside an oyster and irritates it. The oyster slowly covers it, layer by layer, until a pearl forms. 

I had started this process looking for a name to replace Peninnah. Instead, the more I read, the more I found myself returning to it. 

Which brings me back to my personal journey. I had exposed myself completely to someone I loved. I trusted him. I believed the life we were building together was real. And then I discovered that so much of it was a lie. 

For a long time, I stopped trusting my own judgement. If I could be so wrong about the person closest to me, what else was I wrong about? My entire sense of what was real seemed to disappear. And underneath all of it was deep shame. 

I was ashamed that I had been taken in. Ashamed that I had not seen it. We all hear stories about people being conned and wonder how they could be so naïve. And then I became one of those people. 

Last year at Limmud, I told my story publicly for the first time. I didn’t know how people would look at me afterwards, but I just knew I could not carry the secret any longer. The weight of the shame was becoming unbearable. 

Afterwards there was a long pause. Then people stood up and clapped. A queue formed. One woman hugged me, crying. We didn’t say a word. 

The marriage had left me questioning my judgement, my memories, and sometimes even my understanding of what was real. Yet nobody at Limmud asked me to prove what had happened. Nobody suggested there must be another explanation I had somehow missed. They simply believed me. I had not realised until then how badly I needed that. 

I think shame is like mould. It grows in dark, closed places. Mine had grown because I was terrified of letting anybody see it. When I finally let people in, it began to lose its hold on me. I thought telling people what happened would expose me. Instead, keeping it hidden was what had given the shame so much power. 

Two years later, I am still making sense of everything that happened. I am not going to pretend every wound has disappeared, or that I have neatly turned something terrible into something good. 

I would never choose what happened to me. 

At Pine Street Shul, I asked Rabbi Hadar to formally reaffirm the name Peninnah for me. When he did, it no longer felt like the name a rabbi had selected from a book years earlier. For the first time, the name felt like it belonged to me. 

Perhaps that is why I want to share my story again. Not to say that suffering is good, or that every terrible thing happens in order to teach us something. I do not believe pain needs to be romanticised. But I have learnt that when we are at our lowest, we should not assume we have to survive it alone. 

I am deeply grateful to be part of this community. People made room for me. They listened. They believed me. They helped me carry something I had been trying to carry alone. 

If you too are carrying something that feels too shameful to say out loud, you do not have to tell an auditorium full of people. Tell one person you trust. Let somebody into the dark. The thing that gets inside an oyster and causes a pearl to form is still an irritant. It does not become good because of what eventually grows around it. 

I cannot change what happened to me. But I can choose what I carry forward from it. 

The name I once wanted to replace is now the name I have chosen to embrace. 

Today, I proudly carry the name Peninnah. 

• Paula Slier is an international journalist, war correspondent, and speaker who has reported from conflict zones across the Middle East, Africa, and Europe. Her work focuses on geopolitics, modern conflict, information warfare, and the battle for truth.