I am very excited for the opportunity to share words of Torah with you. Each week, in this spot, I look to share an idea I've found that speaks to me and that I think will resonate with you as well. This week, I share with you an excerpt of an article by Rabbi Katriel (Kenneth) Brander entitled "Cleared for Publication" - The Power of a Name. In my updates and reflections during my trip to Israel I’ve been trying to include as many names as possible because it gives deeper and more personal meaning to what is going on and greater ability for each of us to relate to it.
“Hutar L’Pirsum.” ‘Cleared for publication.’ The words that break our hearts day after day, as the news updates make their rounds among the living. Once the media gag order - imposed to ensure that the families of the fallen are the first to be informed of what has happened to their loved ones - is lifted, the names of soldiers whose lives were taken are cleared for publication. We rush to our devices, scroll through the names, and scan for familiar faces. If there’s no one we know on the list, we release an uncomfortable sigh of relief. But the relief is quickly overtaken by grief. Sure, maybe not anyone we knew directly. But many knew them. Many loved them. And their hearts and lives have just been shattered.
The experience of reading through the names has been especially poignant for me since last week, when we began reading Sefer Shemot, a book that opens with a striking absence of named characters. As the subjugation and enslavement of the Jewish people gets underway, we are told of an unnamed man from the house of Levi, who marries an unnamed woman, who leaves her unnamed baby in the Nile under the watchful gaze of his unnamed sister, until the unnamed daughter of Pharaoh finds the child, takes him home, and calls him Moshe. And even once the redeemer-to-be grows up and ventures out into the world, he continues interacting with nameless Egyptians and nameless Hebrews. For Shemot begins with us living stateless, enslaved, in an existence where numbers, not names, matter.
All this takes a turn in this week’s Torah portion, Va’era. The focal point of God’s appearance to Moshe is the revelation of the four-lettered divine name YKVK. Like all names of God, this name represents a singular aspect of His essence. In the case of YKVK, a name the Torah states that was not even revealed to Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, it is the ability for us as a people to be intimately connected with Him. Our redemption begins when this Divine name is revealed to us, a name singularly representing the capacity for a Divine intimate relationship with the Jewish people.
Hoping and praying for a Shabbat Shalom in every sense of the term,
Rabbi Davies
Rabbi@SOICherryHill.org
