YHWH Is the Sound of Breathing

The claim comes from two modern writers

The claim goes like this. When you breathe in, you make the sound Yah. When you breathe out, you make the sound weh. So a baby’s first breath says the name YHWH, and a person’s last breath says it too. The claim usually adds that the ancient rabbis taught this.

No ancient source says this. The claim has two parts, and each part comes from a different modern writer.

The first part comes from Rob Bell. In 2006 he said the letters of the name are breathing sounds, that a first breath and a last breath say the name, and that the ancient rabbis believed it. Most Christians who repeat the claim learned it from him, directly or through someone else. Bell does not say to breathe in Yah and breathe out weh.

The second part, breathing in one half of the name and breathing out the other half, comes from David Abram, a writer on language and nature. In 1996 he wrote that unnamed “contemporary students of Kabbalah” say Y-H as they breathe in and W-H as they breathe out. Kabbalah is a tradition of Jewish mysticism.

The post that is shared online today combines Bell’s examples about birth and death with Abram’s breathing split, and presents the result as ancient teaching.

The sections below go through each writer, then look at what the ancient sources say.

Rob Bell brought the claim into churches

Rob Bell is a former pastor who became known for a series of short teaching films called NOOMA. In 2006 he released the fourteenth film, Breathe. In it he said:

The ancient rabbis believed that these letters actually functioned kind of as vowels in the Hebrew language. They believed that they were kind of breathing sounds and that ultimately the name is simply unpronounceable because the letters together are essentially the sound of breathing.

Neither the film nor its official discussion guide names a rabbi or an ancient book. No ancient rabbinic text has been found that says the letters are breathing sounds.

In the same film Bell asks whether a baby’s first breath and a person’s last breath are the name being spoken. He also asks what you hear when a person says there is no God. These examples are still the most common church version of the claim.

Bell did not name his source in the film, but his reading list points to one. On 1 May 2006, about six months before Breathe came out, a suggested reading list on one of Bell’s websites included Lawrence Kushner’s Jewish Spirituality: A Brief Introduction for Christians. A longer list Bell handed out in person included Eyes Remade for Wonder, a 1998 collection of Kushner’s writing. Page 142 of that book reprints Kushner’s paragraph about breathing.

Bell changed two things. Kushner wrote that the name cannot be spoken because the letters are vowels, “not because of the holiness.” Bell gives holiness as a reason. He says the name is “so sacred, so mysterious, so holy.” Bell also says the ancient rabbis believed it. Kushner does not say that.

Lawrence Kushner printed the full claim in 1993

Lawrence Kushner is a Reform rabbi who writes popular books on Jewish spirituality and mysticism. In his 1993 book The Book of Words, on pages 27 and 29, he wrote:

The letters of the Name of God in Hebrew are yod, hay, vav, and hay. They are frequently mispronounced Yahveh. But in truth they are unutterable. Not because of the holiness they evoke, but because they are all vowels and you cannot pronounce all the vowels at once without risking respiratory injury. This word is the sound of breathing. The holiest Name in the world, the Name of the Creator, is the sound of your own breathing.

Kushner does not cite any ancient source for this. He presents it as a meditation: sit quietly, listen to your breathing, and treat each breath as saying the name.

This is a teaching from late twentieth-century American Jewish spirituality. It does not report what ancient rabbis believed.

Arthur Waskow and Arthur Green also compared the letters to breath

Arthur Waskow is a leader in the Jewish Renewal movement. He gives the earliest date anyone claims for the idea. In an account he wrote much later, he says that in 1982 he tried to pronounce YHWH without adding any vowels and heard the sound of breathing. After that he began using Yahh and “Breath of Life” instead of Adonai, the Hebrew word for “Lord.”

He describes it as his own experiment, not as an ancient teaching:

“YHWH.” It is the Name that by tradition we are forbidden to pronounce. Free yourself, I thought: Pronounce it. With no vowels, it came out: “Yyyyhhhhwwwwhhhh.” It sounded like a breath.

That passage is on page 161 of Godwrestling: Round 2, copyright 1996, three years after Kushner’s book. The 1982 date comes only from Waskow’s later account. No article, recording, or journal from 1982 has been found that records it at the time.

Arthur Green, a scholar of Jewish mysticism, wrote in 1992 that the letters are “mere vowels, mere breath.” He does not say that every breath in and out pronounces the name.

None of these writers says the ancient rabbis taught the idea.

David Abram printed the breathe-in, breathe-out version in 1996

Bell’s film does not assign some letters to breathing in and others to breathing out. That idea first appears in print in David Abram’s 1996 book The Spell of the Sensuous. He wrote that unnamed “contemporary students of Kabbalah” put Y-H on a whispered breath in and W-H on the breath out. He does not name these students or cite an earlier book. The passage is on page 148 of the 1996 Pantheon edition and page 149 of the 1997 Vintage edition.

Other writers repeated Abram’s version:

• In 2005 Eric Arnow wrote “breathing in Yah, and breathing out Weh” and connected it to Abram. This is the earliest source found that uses the exact words Yah and weh.
• In 2008 Richard Rohr, a Franciscan teacher, printed the same exercise. He says an unnamed rabbi taught him to breathe in YH and breathe out WH.
• In 2011 the singer Jason Gray wrote a song based on Bell’s questions about breath.
• By 2022 a post shared under Sandra Thurman Caporale’s name combined Abram’s breathing split with Bell’s examples about birth, unbelief, and death. This is the version most people see online today.

Ancient sources say the name was spoken aloud

The ancient sources do not say the name was impossible to pronounce. They say it was spoken, but only by certain people, in certain places, at certain times.

Mishnah Yoma 6:2 says that on the Day of Atonement the high priest spoke the name, and the priests and people who heard it knelt and bowed with their faces to the ground.

Mishnah Sotah 7:6 says that in the Temple the priests spoke the name as it is written. Outside the Temple they used a substitute word.

Babylonian Talmud Pesachim 50a says the name is written one way but read as Adonai in the present age.

Babylonian Talmud Kiddushin 71a says teachers taught the pronunciation of the four-letter name to their students once every seven years. Some say twice every seven years.

Philo, a first-century Judean writer from Alexandria, describes the name as four letters that qualified people could hear and speak in the holy place. His concern is people using the name at the wrong time. He does not say it is physically impossible to say.

All of these sources describe the name as a word that people spoke. None of them describes it as the sound of breathing.

Josephus called the letters four vowels

Josephus, a first-century Judean historian, wrote in Jewish War 5.235 that the name on the high priest’s headpiece consisted of “four vowels.”

This is the ancient statement closest to Kushner’s claim that the letters are all vowels. Josephus does not say the name sounds like breathing.

The Loeb edition, the standard English translation, notes that his meaning is uncertain. He may have been thinking of a Greek spelling of the name made of vowel letters, such as Iaue.

Hebrew letters do not work that way. Hebrew is written with consonant letters, and some of them can also help show a vowel. In the reconstructed pronunciation Yahwe, the letters yod, the first he, and waw stand for consonant sounds. The final he probably marks the vowel at the end. The letters are not four breathing sounds.

A Dead Sea Scroll from the first century BCE, 4Q120, writes the name in Greek letters as Iao. The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus also gives the form Iao. Both treat it as a name people pronounced.

Medieval breathing exercises were different

Some later Jewish mystics did use controlled breathing. Abraham Abulafia, a thirteenth-century teacher, told his students to pronounce letters and vowels and to time each sound with a breath. His students spoke the letters on purpose. Abulafia did not say that a person says YHWH every time they breathe.

No passage has been found in the Zohar, the main book of medieval Kabbalah, that says the four-letter name is the sound of ordinary breathing.

The Bible does not connect the name to breathing

In Exodus 3:14–15 the name is linked to ehyeh, “I will be,” from the Hebrew verb hayah, “to be.” This link does not prove where the name YHWH came from historically. It also does not mention breath.

“Yhwh – the Elohim of your fathers, the Elohim of Abraham, the Elohim of Isaac, and the Elohim of Jacob – has sent me to you. This is my name forever, and this is my memorial from generation to generation.” (Exodus 3:15, NET, divine name restored)

Genesis 2:7 uses the word neshamah for the “breath of life” and naphach for the act of breathing into the man. Another word, ruach, can mean wind, breath, or spirit. None of these words is YHWH.

Psalm 150:6 mentions breath and the short form of the name, Yah, in the same verse:

“Let everything that has breath praise Yah. Praise Yah!” (Psalm 150:6, NET, divine name restored)

Genesis Rabbah 14:9, an ancient Jewish commentary on Genesis, reads this verse as a call to praise Yah for every breath. In that reading, breath is used to praise the name. Breath is not the name itself.

Summary: the claim is modern

Arthur Green compared the letters to breath in 1992. Lawrence Kushner printed the full claim in 1993. Arthur Waskow printed his version in 1996 and later said he first noticed it in 1982.

David Abram printed the breathe-in, breathe-out version in 1996 and credited unnamed modern students of Kabbalah.

Rob Bell brought the claim into churches in 2006 and said the ancient rabbis believed it. His reading list from earlier that year shows he was reading Kushner.

The post shared online today combines Bell’s examples with Abram’s breathing split.

The ancient sources say the name was spoken aloud, limited to certain people and places, replaced with a substitute word, and taught privately. None of them says that breathing pronounces the name. The books and dates are listed below.

---

Sources

1. Rob Bell, NOOMA 014: Breathe (2006), official discussion guide. US release dated 31 October 2006.
2. Walter Dale, “A Book List”, 1 May 2006 – a copy of Bell’s suggested reading list, with Kushner, Jewish Spirituality: A Brief Introduction for Christians, as the second title.
3. Teddy Ray, “Rob Bell has been a great influence on me”, 19 December 2012 – the longer list Bell handed out in person, including Eyes Remade for Wonder.
4. Lawrence Kushner, The Book of Words (Jewish Lights, 1993), 27–29; the same paragraph is reprinted in Eyes Remade for Wonder (Jewish Lights, 1998), 142, and quoted from that collection by Rabbi Paul Kipnes.
5. David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous (Pantheon, 1996), 148; first Vintage Books edition (1997), 149.
6. Eric Arnow, “What religion are you?”, dated 11 February 2005.
7. Arthur Waskow, “Creating a New Diaspora Judaism”, 5 July 2024 – his later account dating the experience to 1982.
8. Arthur Waskow, Godwrestling: Round 2 (Jewish Lights, copyright 1996), 161, chapter 12, “To Catch a Breath”; excerpt at Friends of Silence.
9. Arthur Green, Seek My Face, Speak My Name (Jason Aronson, 1992), 19.
10. Richard Rohr, Things Hidden (Franciscan Media, 2008), 129–131; the Center for Action and Contemplation’s adaptation, “The YHWH Prayer”.
11. Jason Gray, “Is the Name of God the Sound of Our Breathing?”, 2011.
12. The earliest located copy of the Sandra Thurman Caporale text, “Why Breathing Deeply Matters”, 7 February 2022.
13. Josephus, Jewish War 5.235.
14. Mishnah Sotah 7:6 and Mishnah Yoma 6:2.
15. Babylonian Talmud Kiddushin 71a and Pesachim 50a.
16. Philo, Life of Moses 2.114–116, 206–208.
17. Abraham Abulafia, Light of the Intellect, “The Life of the World to Come” – medieval pronunciation exercises using letters, vowels, and controlled breathing.
18. Aaron Hornkohl, “The Tetragrammaton”, in Studies in Semitic Vocalisation and Reading Traditions (2023), 45–54.
19. Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 1.94.2, and Anthony R. Meyer, The Divine Name in Early Judaism (2017), on 4Q120.
20. Genesis Rabbah 14:9 on praising Yah with every breath.