3.   e Apotropaic Potential of the Name “Shadday” in the Hebrew Bible and the early Rabbinic Literature e Rabbinic Judaism recognizes the special value of the divine names: since the early midrashes, through the medieval exegesis up till the modern era, these appellations have been believed to possess extraordinary performative potential. For instance in BT Berakhot a it is said of Betzalel,¹ the divinely inspired architect of the Tent of Meeting (Exodus :–) that he was in possession of the knowledge how to permute the letters “by means of which the heav- ens and the earth have been created”.² Rashi, the medieval French  Worth noting is the very meaning of the name of the artisan itself. It could be translated as “in the shade of El” what reverberates with the phrase be- tzelem elohim in Genesis :. In other words, Betzalel both due to his name and the nature of his profession could be considered to mimic the divine creation. For a throughout study of the idea of tzelem in the HB as well as in the surrounding ancient Near Eastern cultures see: S.L. Herring, Divine Substitution. Humanity as the Manifestation of Deity in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht .  All the sources cited in the present study come in author’s own translation. e square brackets indicate the words introduced in translation, the curly brackets – the words translated freely, whereas the soft brackets – additional remarks. e priority of the translations was to maintain the inherent am- biguity of the source text.