“My name is important, my name is important, my name is important….” Those were the words in a radio show that my Confirmation Class did in 1977 about the Last American Jew. I haven’t forgotten.
Today’s Torah portion begins with the words Eleh sh’mot…These are the names. It is a record of the Israelites who came down to Egypt.
It is all about names.
It happened again this week. I was at a meeting of Jewish professionals with a name badge on and someone said. “Margaret. That;s not a very Jewish name. Are you sure, you are Jewish?” The answer to that is yes. In most families, names are chosen very, very carefully. I was named after my grandmother Marguerite, my other grandmother Marian and my mother’s best friend Joy. It is quite a legacy to live up to.
Why are names important?
Rabbi Irwin Huberman reminds us that there is a Kabbalistic teaching that there is a power in our Hebrew names. The Hebrew word for name is Shem, the plural is Sh’mot. One of the words for soul or spirit is NeShama. Our tradition teaches us that when we name a child, that part of the Neshama of the person being named for, grounds the child through its shem, its name.
In some families a Hebrew name is never given. I wasn’t given one until my Bat Mitzvah. My mother was never given one as a child. Neither was Simon’s mother. Some families gave boys Hebrew names and girls Yiddish names. Some families only gave English names, wanting to make sure that all that America has to offer was accessible to their children. Abraham might be Abe. Sarah could be Susan. Aaron, Arnold, Moses was Morris. David became Donald. Look around this room. We have Leonard, Myron, Charles, Helen, Manfred, Lee, Lizzi, Renee. Not a :Biblical name in the bunch. It was a way to make sure our children were accepted, included, able to succeed in business.
Earlier this year I had the opportunity to help a family give Hebrew names to their now adult children.
I had reached out to some rabbinic colleagues before this brief naming ceremony. We are used to naming our boys on the 8rh day at a bris, and I am delighted I have a bris to attend tomorrow. We have invented simchat habrit or simcha bat ceremonies to welcome with joy a girl into the covenant as well. They are still so new in the Jewish tradition, we don’t even have a consistent name for them! They may happen on the 8th day to be parallel or on the first Shabbat at a Torah service or on the 30th day or at some other time that is more convenient for the new mother. My own daughter had two, a private one at home on the 8th day and a more public one in the synagogue at the 30 day mark.
We named her Sarah Elisheva in Hebrew, Sarah Elizabeth in English, after my grandfather Stephen. Another of those highly Anglicized names. In fact, if she had been a boy she might have been Zachary but my mother thought that was too Hebrew. So we had settled on Samuel Adams, after the Boston patriot, not the beer, since Adams is a family name. At some point, we made a parenting mistake and told Sarah that her name means princess in Hebrew. Last week she got to meet a real Princess Sarah, the keynote speaker at Martin Luther King weekend. But that is a story for another time.
So I asked my colleagues, what do we do if there isn’t a Hebrew name by the time the child is an adult. Often the rabbi meets the family in his or her study, they discuss options and the name is conferred. It’s all business. It seemed we needed a ceremony. A new ritual. Some way to mark this liminal time.
I brought the family into the sanctuary. We sat on the bimah. In the royal looking chairs. Leaving one for Elijah—just like you do for a bris or a baby naming. Because every child might just be the Messiah that Elijah might just herald. We said a couple of prayers. We read the verse from Pirke Avot, “Rabbi Shimon used to say: There are three crowns–the crown of the Torah, the crown of the priesthood, and the crown of kingship, but the crown of a good name surpasses them all.” (Pirke Avot 4:17) The two young adults explained the names they had chosen. We lit candles because they may bring light into this darkened world. They may be the ones who gather the sparks together and repair this world. We sipped some wine, reciting Kiddush to make this holy time and space and said the Shehechianu for preserving us to reach this day.
The man, just back from a birthright trip, chose Moshe, Moses. He had been discovering his Jewish roots and felt connected to Moses who also did not know the full extent of his Jewishness under he was an adult. It was a perfect choice for someone growing into his Jewish identity. There were tears from the father as he spoke. There were tears from this rabbi. It was a perfect moment.
Some of this is about memory. Some of this is about legacy. That’s important in this story too. Today’s portion says that “A New King arose over Egypt who knew not Joseph.” We are exerted to remember that we were slaves in the land of Egypt. Over and over again we are told to love the stranger among us because we were strangers in the land of Egypt. That hasn’t changed. That is still my prime focus—taking care of the widow, the orphan , the stranger, the most marginalized amongst us.
As Rabbi Huberman said, “Over the generations, rabbis have asked how the Jewish people survived under Egyptian slavery. How is it possible, they wondered, that, under the Egyptians’ whip, under such pressure to conform and shed their beliefs, the Israelites managed to persevere? The Midrash, our collection of stories and legends, credits four reasons with our survival. Rabbi Huna, in the name of Bar Kapparah, states: “We maintained our language; we didn’t engage in widespread gossip; we did not engage in immoral behavior; and we did not change our names.”
This focus on names and memory continues in the portion. In this portion there are some strong women whose names we learn and remember. Yocheved. Moses’s mother. Who has the courage to keep Moses at home. Miriam, his sister, who has the courage to follow Moses in the basket and find a nursemaid for Moses. Pharaoh’s daughter, whose name Batya we learn in the midrash, who had the courage to rescue Moses from the water and raise him as her own. Zipporah, Moses’s wife who has the courage to circumcise Gershom, preserving the legacy of the covenant.
And Shifrah and Puah. The midwives who had the courage to defy Pharaoh’s orders. Who continued to deliver Israelite boys and not throw them into the river. They are the real heroes.
When Moses flees Egypt after murdering an overseer, he is in Midian. The daughters of Jethro, the Midianite priest, recognize him as an Egyptian prince. This confusion about names and identity continues here. Jethro isn’t even called Jethro here. He is called Reuel. In the next chapter he is called Jethro!
Moses tries to blend in as a Midianite. He is shepherding the sheep on Mount Horeb, also known as Mount Sinai and he sees something unusual—a bush that is burning and not consumed. He approaches to get a closer look. He asks two questions—Who am I? an existential question if ever there were one. He seems to not know if he is an Israelite, an Egyptian, a Midianite. And Who are You? G-d answers Eheyeh asher Eheyeh, hard to translate, something like “I am that I am”, or maybe better “I will be what I will be.”
And Moses realizes he is standing on holy ground. He takes off his shoes. He answers, Hinini, I am here. I am fully present. I will be fully here. That is what each of us is called to do. To answer Hinini. To recognize our name when we are called and to recognize that we are standing on holy ground.
When is he answering, he is like the young man I helped pick that name. He is embracing his Jewish identity. He is standing up for the strangers amongst us.
Rabbi Lord Sacks says it better. “So when Moses asks, “Who am I?” it is not just that he feels himself unworthy. He feels himself uninvolved. He may have been Jewish by birth, but he had not suffered the fate of his people. He had not grown up as a Jew. He had not lived among Jews. He had good reason to doubt that the Israelites would even recognise him as one of them. How, then, could he become their leader? More penetratingly, why should he even think of becoming their leader? Their fate was not his. He was not part of it. He was not responsible for it. He did not suffer from it. He was not implicated in it.
What is more, the one time he had actually tried to intervene in their affairs – he killed an Egyptian taskmaster who had killed an Israelite slave, and the next day tried to stop two Israelites from fighting one another – his intervention was not welcomed. “Who made you ruler and judge over us?” they said to him. These are the first recorded words of an Israelite to Moses. He had not yet dreamed of being a leader and already his leadership was being challenged.”
Sacks continues: Maimonides, who defines this as “separating yourself from the community” (poresh mi-darkhei ha-tsibbur, Hilkhot Teshuva 3:11), says that it is one of the sins for which you are denied a share in the world to come. This is what the Hagaddah means when it says of the wicked son that “because he excludes himself from the collective, he denies a fundamental principle of faith.” What fundamental principle of faith? Faith in the collective fate and destiny of the Jewish people. Who am I? asked Moses, but in his heart he knew the answer. I am not Moses the Egyptian or Moses the Midianite. When I see my people suffer I am, and cannot be other than, Moses the Jew. And if that imposes responsibilities on me, then I must shoulder them. For I am who I am because my people are who they are.”
I used this very verse this week when I went to the executive committee. “Do not separate yourself from the community.” (Pirke Avot 2:5) Each gave their own definition of community. Friendship. Support. Prayer. Belonging. Nurturing. Similar beliefs. Each of them has answered, “Hinini.”
Later today I will be at the march in solidarity with women all over the world. In fact, I have been quietly helping to organize it. In fact, ours in Elgin is starting at 2 because they wanted to make sure that I and others from the Jewish community could participate without violating Shabbat observance. That group of women is a community too. Elgin is a community. Elgin Standing Together exemplifies this portion of remembering the names, the legacy and the history of our ancestors, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Joseph. Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah. Joseph, Moses, Yocheved, Miriam, Shifrah and Puah, Zipporarh, Marguerite and Marian and Joy. Nelle and Don. My name stands on their memory. I stand on their shoulders.
Moses stood up and was counted. That standing up, that recognizing that others are marginalized is why he received the crown of a good name.