Operation “Rising Lion” was a large-scale Israeli military campaign launched on June 13, 2025 that targeted Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, air defenses, military bases, and senior leadership. The operation marked the opening of a direct, high-intensity conflict between Israel and Iran. The unique name for that military operation comes from the Biblical passage in which Balaam describes the Jewish People “as a rising lion” (Num. 23:24), using the word lavi for “lion.” In this article, we will discuss various given names related to “lions” – and you might be surprised at how many there are.
Let’s start with the name Lavi itself. The Hebrew word lavi in the sense of “lion” appears 12 times in the Bible, and its feminine counterpart leviyah (“lioness”) appears another two times. Perhaps most famously, Moshe Rabbeinu compares the Tribe of Gad to a lavi (Deut. 33:20). The rabbis connect the word lavi to the Hebrew word lev (“heart”), explaining that with its ferocious roar, the lion “grabs” the hearts of men in scaring them. The great Italian Kabbalist Rabbi Menachem Azariah of Fano (1548–1620) offers an even more gruesome explanation: a lion is called lavi because when feasting on its prey, it begins by eating its heart (lev).
The earliest instances of Lavi as a first name that I know about are all found in the halachic responsa of the Algerian Sage Rabbi Yitzchak bar Sheshet (1326–1408), also known as the Rivash. The name Lavi appears three times in the patronymics of the addressees to whom his responsa were written: Don Benvenist ben Lavi (§249), Don Vidal ben Lavi (§360), and Don Shlomo ben Lavi (§435). The “don” title that all of these recipients bore suggests that they were Spanish, so it seems that the given name Lavi first emerged in Spain before the Expulsion in 1492. There was also a famous poet and Kabbalist named Rabbi Shimon Lavi (1486–1585) – he wrote the “Bar Yochai” song that many people sing on Lag B’Omer, as well as a commentary to the Zohar called Ketem Paz – but in his case, it seems Lavi was a surname, not a personal name.
Another popular given name associated with lions is Aryeh. Like Lavi, this name also derives from a Biblical Hebrew word, aryeh (“lion”). For example, the first time that the word aryeh appears in Tanach is when Jacob compares his son Judah to a “lion cub” (gur aryeh yehudah) in Gen. 49:9. The Baal HaTurim (to Num. 24:9) writes that aryeh refers to a later stage in a lion’s maturation than lavi does, so they aren’t quite synonyms. In some seventeen cases in the Bible, the final hey of aryeh is dropped to form the word ari (“lion”). Rabbi Reuven Margolies (1889–1971) – who was a prolific writer and served as the librarian of the Rambam Library in Tel Aviv – writes that the term aryeh denotes a lion at its peak prowess and vigor, whereas the term ari refers to an aged lion, who is already past his prime. Either way, both Aryeh and Ari are popular Jewish names, even though they were seemingly not used as names in the Biblical period or even in the times of Chazal. Some have traced the name Aryeh to the time of Chazal as seen in the name of the Sage Rabbi Yonasan ben Aryeh cited in Yalkut Shimoni (§859), but the truth is that it seems that this name is really just a typo because the Jerusalem Talmud (Peah 1:1) cites the same tradition in the name of Rabbi Yochanan ben Maria. (See also II Kgs. 15:25, where some commentators see an early instance of Aryeh as a personal name).
Another name related to Aryeh/Ari is Ariel. According to the Israeli Ministry of Interior (Misrad HaPnim), Ariel was the most popular male name given to Jewish babies born in Israel in 2024. Needless to say, the most popular name given to babies born in Israel overall that year was Mohammad. This name is clearly derived from the word ariel that appears in the Bible. That Biblical Hebrew word is used in three different ways: Firstly, ariel refers to mighty soldiers (II Sam. 23:20, I Chron. 11:22). In this sense, the word can be parsed as a portmanteau of ari (“lion”) and el (“powerful entity,” examples of which include Hashem, angels, and judges) in allusion to those soldiers’ power. Secondly, ariel appears as a poetic eponym for the City of Jerusalem (Isa. 29:1–2, 29:7). This might be because Jerusalem was the capital city of the tribal territory of Judah, whose flag bore the image of a lion (see Bamidbar Rabbah §2:7) and whom Jacob compared to a lion cub (Gen. 49:9). This is probably why the logo for the Jerusalem municipality shows the likeness of a lion. Or ariel might be a Hebraicized form of the Akkadian name for the Holy City, Yeru-El (see Gen. 22:14). Finally, the term ariel refers to the altar in the Holy Temple of Jerusalem (Ezek. 43:15–16). A popular Israeli nickname Arik is a form of Ariel, with the final -el part dropped and the diminutive k appended to the name.
Going back to the name Aryeh, there is another name very closely associated with that name: Leib. While it might be tempting to connect Leib with the Hebrew name Lavi that we discussed earlier, the truth is that Leib is actually of European origin. It is a form of the German word lowe meaning “lion” (cognate to the Yiddish leyb), which is also related to the Slavic word lev (“lion”) found in languages like Russian, Ukrainian, Slovak, and Czech.
There is a lot to say about Aryeh and Leib, but we will have to save that for a future article. But I do want to share a fascinating story told about Rabbi Refoel Shapiro (1837–1921), tosh yeshiva in Volozhin and author of Toras Refoel: It was within a year of the death of Rabbi Refoel Shapiro’s father Rabbi Aryeh Leib Kovner (1787–1853) that a baby boy was born to Rabbi Refoel Shapiro. And Rabbi Shapiro wanted to name his newborn son Aryeh Leib after his illustrious father. But Rabbi Shapiro’s father-in-law, the Netziv (1816–1893) – whose full name was Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin – protested this decision. The Netziv argued that the Ashkenazi custom is not to name children after living ancestors, and since his own name contained “Yehuda” which often goes with “Leib,” it was inappropriate for Rabbi Shapiro to name his son “Aryeh Leib.”
Rabbi Shapiro responded to his father-in-law’s concerns by explaining that there are actually two types of “Leib,” and while they might be homonyms and homographs, they have two different meanings: When the name Leib is coupled with Aryeh, it means “lion.” But when the name Leib is coupled with Yehudah it means “lauding/praising” (loben in German, or loybn in Yiddish), just like the original Hebrew name Yehudah meant (see Gen. 49:8). Since the name Leib when attached to Aryeh is different in kind from the name Leib when attached to Yehudah, he concluded that there is no problem to name his son Aryeh Leib, even though his living father-in-law was (partially) named Yehuda.
Here’s another story related to “lion” names: On Yom Ha’Atzmaut 1975, it was first made public that the Israeli air force developed a special combat aircraft called the Kfir. A few days later, the Israeli newspaper HaTzofeh reported that the Freiman family from Hod HaSharon decided to name their son Kfir in honor of this new technological wonder. The implication of that newspaper article was that this was the first case of somebody being named Kfir. However, an article from Mizrachi educator Dov Rozen (1914–1989) subsequently appeared in HaTzofeh, which clarified that the name Kfir is not a totally new name, but was already in use. Rozen pointed to three boys named Kfir that he personally knew, some of whom were already adolescents: Kfir Cohen from Rechovot, Kfir Katsover from Hebron, and another boy named Kfir from Jerusalem, who was the grandson of Chaim Pozner (the director of Yad VaShem). Rozen further noted that in 1966, he wrote a sefer called Psok Li Shimecha which lists various Jewish names that were already in use along with pesukim from Tanach that are associated with those names, and he already listed Kfir as a name back then.
The word kfir appears in the Bible in reference to an “adolescent lion” that’s older than a cub (gur), but still not a full-grown aryeh. Chazal note that the root of the word kfir (kaf-peh-reish) also means “denying,” explaining that this related to an “adolescent lion” because when a person encounters such a beast in the wild, he will “deny” his life and give up on surviving the dangerous encounter. Others note that the root kaf-peh-reish also means “covering” (as in the kapporet placed atop the Ark of the Covenant), and in the context of kfir, it refers to the lion’s mane which covers him in hair.
Since Kfir is a new name that has only recently been introduced, Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky advises against giving this name and if somebody is named Kfir, he recommends changing their name to Aryeh.
If you look at other languages, you might recognize other words for “lion” that have become used as names: Assad means “lion” in Arabic and Shir means “lion” in Persian (Farsi). The Turkish word for “lion” is Aslan – a name some readers might be familiar with as referring to the talking lion in the Chronicles of Narnia. Speaking of which, Operation Narnia was the codename for the covert Israeli operation targeting Iran’s nuclear program leadership that was launched within Operation Rising Lion by which Israel simultaneously assassinated nine of Iran’s top nuclear scientists in Tehran by striking their homes while they slept. Some have noted that the imagery of the lion is important to the cause of regime change in Iran because the Iranian flag under the current Islamist regime removed the image of the lion that was at the center of the old Iranian flag under the Shah.
Several other given names are based on the Latin word for “lion” – Leon, Leo, Leonard, Leonardo. These names are all etymologically related to the English word lion. Interestingly, while they might not sound like typical Jewish names, some of these names were actually used by Jews going back over one-thousand years. One of the greatest early Ashkenazi Sages – Rashi’s teacher’s teacher – was known as Rabbeinu Gershom Meor HaGolah (960–1040). He was the one responsible for the ban on marrying two wives, divorcing one’s wife against her will, and reading other people’s private mail. But who was Rabbeinu Gershom’s teacher? It turns out that his name was Rabbeinu Leontine or Rabbeinu Leon. He lived in the Rhenish city of Mainz during the mid-900s. Technically speaking, his full name was Rabbeinu Yehudah ben Rav Meir HaKohen HaZakein of Mainz, but he is also referred to as Rabbeinu Leon in some sources. We’ve already established the connection between Yehudah and lions.
Other rabbis whose names include these Latinate terms for “lion” include the French Tosafist Rabbi Yehuda Sirlion (1166–1224); the Spanish publisher of the Zohar Rabbi Moshe de Leon (1240–1305), who hailed from the Kingdom of León in modern-day Spain; and the Italian Renaissance Sage Rabbi Yehuda Aryeh “Leon” of Modena (1571–1648). Of course, French, Spanish and Italian are all Romance languages, meaning they are all based on Latin, so it makes sense that Latin-based variants of “lion” would be used in places where those languages were spoken. Interestingly, even though Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky opposes naming one’s child a newfangled or non-traditional name, he has nothing against giving one’s child the name Leon.
P.S., I originally wanted to publish this article in the summer during the Horoscope/Zodiacal month of Leo (Mazal Aryeh), but alas this column had to go on hiatus for the summer months.