Names, names, and more names

Va’era

Exodus 6:2 - 9:35

Précis: God reiterates His intention to free the Israelites from bondage and to create a covenant with them. Moses goes back to Pharaoh to seek release of the Israelites. Pharaoh refuses and we see the first seven of the fabled plagues: blood, frogs, fleas, beetles, cattle disease, boils, and hail. Pharaoh relents after each plague begins, deciding to let the people go, but then God “hardens Pharaoh’s heart” and he refuses to allow them to leave.

Ex. 6:2-3 “God also said to Moses, ‘I am The Eternal.  I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as El Shaddai, but by my name YHVH I did not make Myself known to them...’”

               I recently had an extended discussion with a congregant couple about baby names. They wanted to know if it was “permitted” to have a different Hebrew name than the English name they planned for their child. I explained that customs vary significantly, and that while many try to use the same name as an ancestor for the Hebrew name, there seems to be a much more relaxed custom when it comes to English names, with many parents selecting names with little or no relation to the Hebrew name. The congregants with whom I spoke were not satisfied with my answer, wanting  something more definitive. When it comes to names, many of us want to get it “right.” [For a fascinating recent article on the origin of Jewish last names, see http://jewishcurrents.org/the-origins-and-meanings-of-ashkenazic-last-names-12849.]

               This week’s Torah reading again brings the matter of “names” to the fore. In this verse, God tells Moses that He is to be known by a name previously not known to the Patriarchs. But the statement that they “did not know” the name YHVH is contradicted by the text itself. Abraham knew it (Gen. 15:7) when his covenant with God was made. Jacob knew it as well (Gen. 28:13) as we see in the story of his ladder dream. Nahama Leibowitz explains: “From this it emerges that the text is a pointer not to God’s name but to God’s essence” (Studies in Shemot p.133). This seems to mean that while the name may have been “known” to the Patriarchs, its “meaning” was being newly revealed to Moses.

          These first chapters of Exodus spend a great deal of time on God’s name. Only last week, we had the revelation of God’s name as “Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh” [I will be what I will be (Ex. 3:13–14)]. Laura Geller has suggested (Reform Voices of Torah 1/11/10) that if “ehyeh” is the future tense of the verb “to be” than YHVH may be the present tense of the same verb: “is.” Someone famously once said that it’s important to know what the definition of “is” is. So it would seem here, since that definition defines the Creator.

               The Hebrew title of this Book in Hebrew is Shemot (Names). In the first parasha, we learned the names of Jacob’s descendants who “went down” into Egypt, and we learned the future tense name of God. In this second parasha, we learn the Name which “is.” Names are always important!