📖 About Leora
Leora is a Hebrew name meaning 'my light,' rooted in the or (light) of Genesis — God's first creative act; it is a distinctly Israeli name in the modern Hebrew revival tradition, and was made beloved in American literature as the devoted wife in Sinclair Lewis's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Arrowsmith.
📍 Details
- OriginHebrew
- Gender♀ Female
- MeaningVariant of Liora. My light
🔀 Variants & Related Names
⭐ Famous People
- Leora Arrowsmith (literary character) — The wife of the protagonist in Sinclair Lewis's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Arrowsmith (1925); consistently praised by critics as one of the most loveable and genuinely good female characters in American literature — devoted, practical, and honest; Lewis dedicated the novel to her model, Paul de Kruif's wife Rhea; Leora's death from plague on a Caribbean research island is one of the most affecting scenes in American fiction.
- Liora (Israeli pop singer) — Israeli singer who has represented Israel in international competitions; one of the prominent bearers of the Leora/Liora name family in contemporary Israeli popular culture; the name's association with light gives it a warm, luminous quality that has made it enduringly popular in Israel.
- Leora Batnitzky — American Jewish studies scholar, professor at Princeton University; author of How Judaism Became a Religion (2011) and other influential works on modern Jewish thought and philosophy; a prominent contemporary bearer of the name in American intellectual life.
- Or (divine light in Kabbalah) — In Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah, or (light) is the primal divine energy that flows from the Ein Sof (the infinite God) into all of creation; the Zohar describes creation as a process of divine light being channelled through sefirot (emanations); naming a daughter Leora ('my light') invokes this foundational metaphysical concept.