Fri Jan 16, 2009 at 15:55:34 PM EST
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(great post - promoted by Mik Moore)
Shemot. Names. That’s the Hebrew title of this parsha and of the entire book of Exodus. Why? Because it starts: “Ve’ele shemot beney yisrael…” “And these are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each coming with his household: Reuven, Shimon, Levi, and Yehuda. Yisaschar, Zevulun, and Binyamin. Dan and Naftali, Gad and Asher.” Why doesn’t the text just say “These are the sons of Israel…?” Other lists of people in the Torah (e.g., “X begat Y”) just give the names without stating that they are names. So why does this parsha introduce the sons of Jacob with the word Shemot?
To answer this I turn to a midrash: “Rav Huna said in the name of Bar Kapara: Because of 4 things Israel was redeemed from Egypt: They did not change their names or their language, they did not speak lashon hara (evil gossip), and not one of them was promiscuous” (Vayikra Raba 32:5). Clearly, some of the rabbis considered language and names important enough that they spoke of them in the same breath as two central prohibitions: lashon hara and promiscuity. What do language and names have to do with divine redemption? |
| Sarah Bunin Benor :: Dvar Torah for Parashat Shemot: Names and Language |
I believe the rabbis were pointing to two important components of group identity: when members of a minority group have distinctive ways of speaking and give their children distinctive names, they are better able to maintain their sense of distinction from other groups. When we meet someone with kids named Rachel and Joshua, we guess that they might be Jewish. When we meet someone with kids named Chaim and Avital, we assume not only that they are Jewish but also that they are highly engaged in Jewish religious life. Similarly, we make assumptions about people’s Jewish identity when we hear sentences with lots of Hebrew and Yiddish words and constructions, like these: “Let’s hold off on the tachlis issues until after the chagim; otherwise the whole thing will be a balagan”; “I davka asked not to leyn this time, because I’m davening musaf.” Of course not all American Jews use names and language like this. But in my research among Orthodox and non-Orthodox religiously engaged Jews, I found that they are becoming more common.
I’ll save the details for academic papers, but I’ll give a few examples from an internet-based survey I recently conducted with sociologist Steven M. Cohen with over 30,000 respondents. We listed several Hebrew and Yiddish words and asked respondents if they use them. Percents for each group are presented here:
Jews Non-Jews
mensch 93 48
kvetch 92 58
macher 68 9
yofi 22 1
davka 17 1
We also listed groups of names and asked how likely they would be to give their children names like these (likely or somewhat likely):
Jews Non-Jews
Christopher, John, Christine, Mary 2 54
Joshua, Daniel, Sarah, Rebecca 82 58
Ezra, Ari, Talia, Eliana 41 11
Even in today’s ethnically porous society, Jews are more likely than non-Jews to use Hebrew names and to pepper their English with Hebrew and Yiddish words. These differences are magnified when we look at Jews with different levels of religious engagement. For example, we asked people if they refrain from handling money on Shabbat and correlated their response with their reported use of certain Hebrew words:
Shabbat no money Others
leyn 74 9
davka 65 12
yofi 63 18
kal vachomer 43 3
Similarly, of Jews under 45 who attend religious services more than monthly, 82% said they would be likely or somewhat likely to name their children Ezra, Ari, Talia, and Eliana, compared to 33% of Jews that age who attend on High Holidays or less. The numbers for Matan, Lev, Meital, and Noa are 59% and 12%.
It’s clear that some contemporary American Jews are maintaining their distinctness through their names and their language. And now we can better understand why the second book of the Torah emphasizes the names of the sons (soon to be tribes) of Israel: perhaps it is a foreshadow of the fact that b’nei yisrael will maintain identity as a distinct people in Egypt, not mingling with the Egyptians and taking on their names and language (of course there must have been exceptions, like Moshe).
Based on the rabbis’ understanding, are contemporary American Jews worthy of redemption (however that might be interpreted)? If we minimize our promiscuity and our lashon hara, and if we continue to use Hebrew names and Hebrew words perhaps we will be. As some of the Orthodox rabbis I observe for my research say at the end of their divrei torah: “May we all be zoche (merit) to witness the coming of Moshiach (Messiah) bimhera b’yamenu (speedily in our days).” Amen. |
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