(Based on L’Torah U’l’Moadim by Rabbi Shlomo Yosef Zevin)
“And these are the names of the Children of Yisrael that came to Egypt....” (1:1)
There was once a Jew who wanted very much to join a certain golf club. The only problem was that this golf club didn’t accept Jews. Undeterred, he changed his name and took every conceivable precaution to conceal his Jewishness. A week after he submitted his application, he was very disappointed to receive a polite but firm rejection from the club. “I don’t understand what went wrong,” he complained to a friend. “My name doesn’t sound Jewish. And on the application form, under where it said ‘Religion,’ I even wrote ‘Gentile’!...”
One of the reasons that the Jewish People deserved to be redeemed from Egypt was that they didn’t change their names. But why was this considered something so important that it gained them deliverance from Egypt?
The name of a thing defines its essence. When Adam HaRishon gave names to every creature, he understood that creature’s individual essence and was able to express this in a name.
Similarly, later in this week’s parsha, when Hashem commands Moshe to bring the Jewish People out from Egypt, Moshe says to Hashem, “...They (the Jewish People) will say to me ‘What is His (Hashem’s) Name?’ What shall I answer them?” In other words, if they ask me to define the essence of the Creator – what His name is – what do I answer them?
Obviously, Hashem is above all definition. Man can have no idea or concept of the real essence of the Creator. We can only know that there is a Creator. And that is precisely what Hashem answered to Moshe.
“I will be that Which I will be.” - My essence is the fact that I exist, I have always existed, and I will always exist. That is My essence. That is My Name.
That’s what ‘not changing their names’ means: The Children of Israel didn’t change their essence. They didn’t lose their identity. Even in the depths of exile, they never stopped feeling that their essence, their total gestalt, was Jewish. Right at the beginning of the Book of Shemos, the Torah tells us, “These are the names of the Children of Israel...” With these names they came, and with these names they left, their essence and their identity unaltered in any way.
RABBI YAAKOV ASHER SINCLAIR OHR.EDU
