Why the name Tzofia Reevi...

We knew as soon as Ziva was pregnant that we somehow wanted to name the baby after her father who died three years ago after a long and painful struggle with pancreatic cancer. His name was Jack (Ya'acov) and we didn't exactly like the sound of Ya'acova for our little girl, so we decided to get a bit creative. We quickly decided on the name Tzofia for several reasons.

Tzofia in Hebrew means "looking onward" or "looking toward." Tzofia connotes optimism and hope, and we believe it conveys the way Jack lived his life - always looking on the bright side of life, viewing the glass always half full and always taking on challenges with an unmeasurable amount of positive energy and enthusiasm. Jack could always be relied upon for encouragement and positivity and we hope these wonderful attributes live on in our daughter.

Tzofia is also from the Hatikva, Israel's national anthem.

עין לציון צופיה

Ayin L'tzion Tzofia (An eye still watches toward Zion...)

Little Tzofia is the first sabra of our family and we are unapologetic Zionists, so we thought the name was a nice fit and it's nice to express our love of Israel through our daughter.

Her second name, Reevi, is after Ziva's aunt Reeva who died two months ago after her life was cut short by a terminal disease. Reeva was "the cool Aunt" who had a tremendous amount of influence on Ziva growing up. I'd like to share a small paragraph from a speech that Ziva wrote and that read at Reeva's funeral.

Aunt Reeva always opened my eyes to new and exciting ideas. For my Bat Mitzvah, Aunt Reeva took me around NY for the day. We went to brunch downtown, the MoMA and a Broadway play. Walking around the museum, we had a heated discussion on 'What is Art?' Though I was all of 12 - and without any of the Art History degrees I later acquired - Aunt Reeva listened and challenged me. She let me pick the play and so we went to Starlight Express, which I imagine wasn't on Reeva's list of 'must see theater'. A few years ago, when I met Reev at the new MoMA for a reunion tour of the new galleries, we laughed about how I enjoyed the rollerskating play about trains and the MoMA equally - my own clash of high and low-brow culture. Perhaps my taste was just ahead of my time, I said. "No one I'm related to can have taste that bad, Ziv," she laughed.

We can only hope that Tzofia Reevi will live her life with the positivity, optimism, open mindedness, creativity, humor and love of life that Ziva's dad and aunt did.