The 2026 LABA theme is NAME.

We will be exploring the act of naming, the act of being named, and humanity's strange relationship with language overall.

For thousands of years, Jews have been obsessed with names, interrogating the relationship between language, existence and consciousness. Assigning language to a particular person, place, thing, or feeling has never been, and will never be, a neutral act. To NAME is to give power, and to NAME is to give limits. According to some Jewish mystics, the world was created through naming things. “By means of the twenty-two letters, by giving them a form and shape, by mixing them and combining them in different ways, God made the soul of all that which has been created and all of that which will be,” says the Sefer Yetsirah.

In the Torah, one’s name is often synonymous with one’s destiny, and a change of name can represent a profound shift. In the Talmud, we are warned against calling people bad names, which is seen as equivalent to the sins of murder and idolatry, and subject to divine prosecution. We are also forbidden from saying God’s presumed actual name, while one of things we are allowed to call God is, evocatively, “The Name.” Meanwhile, Maimonides believed there is, and never will be, an adequate name or language, to describe God.

This year at LABA we will be jumping headlong into the potency and mystery behind names, considering how language both makes and distorts reality. Language is our primary tool for understanding the world around us, and making sense of our lives. It also allows us to avoid truths, or ignore the presence of all that is ineffable or unexplainable. We’ll dive into the whole mess of it, all the while having a great time talking, eating, drinking, learning, and laughing in the lush, fertile, free-flowing, romantic, super-serious, and endlessly playful environment of LABA: A Laboratory for Jewish Culture.

We invite you to contemplate how language and names provoke and inspire you, and apply.