Over the past two years, the names of the hostages - children, elderly people, and infants - have been constantly on our lips. People we had never known became close to us; we followed the stories of their lives, their dreams, and those they loved. We ached and wept with their families and joined in their cries. Their names sharpened for us the meaning of a name in the story of our people. Thankfully, the living hostages have already returned to their homes and families, yet the names of all the hostages, both the living and those who were killed, which remain in our hearts, represent the supreme value of human life.
As an educator, I was already a “zealot for names” back in my years working in the school system. It was important to me to know every student, each boy and each girl, by name already in the first week of the school year. I invested all my energy and strength in this. I came to realize that the process of learning names redeems us from anonymity and helps minimize the experience of alienation and meaninglessness that we encounter in many frameworks.
And so Parashat Shemot opens: “These are the names of the children of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob; each man came with his household: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah; Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin; Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher…” (Semot 1:1-4)
Each of the children of Israel who arrived in Egypt had his own name, and in this way their individuality is emphasized.
With the death of that named generation, the children of Israel become anonymous, and Pharaoh speaks of a numerous and mighty people. The biblical narrator tells us that they “were fruitful” and “swarmed,” and in this description the individuality and humanity of the Israelites disappear.
Only after Pharaoh decrees the death of all newborn sons do we once again hear of individual heroes and heroines: individual men and women who have names. These individuals are the ones who bring about the turning point. They refuse to see responsibility for what is happening as lying outside themselves. The appearance of a hero’s name is always bound up with the taking of responsibility and the performance of a courageous act, and in this way the human capacity to choose to be a partner in the struggle against evil and wickedness is expressed.
At the center of the Book of Shemot stands the redemption of Israel from Egypt. The Sages saw the preservation of names as the first and foremost of the four factors by whose merit Israel was redeemed from Egypt, as stated in Vayikra Rabbah (Vilna), Parashat Emor, chapter 32, section 5: “Rabbi Huna said in the name of Bar Kappara: For four things Israel was redeemed from Egypt: they did not change their names, they did not change their language, they did not speak slander, and there was not one among them who was licentious in sexual matters.”
It is as if this passage were written in our own days, teaching us that the repetition of the hostages’ names and our familiarity with their stories and their families contributed to our meriting, by miracle, their redemption from captivity and their return home. And we continue to face the challenge of preserving names as a component in strengthening our Jewish and Israeli identity.
Not by chance was one of the central national projects initiated by the State of Israel the establishment of the institution “Yad Vashem” to commemorate the Holocaust, founded in 1953 following a special law of the Knesset—the “Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Law – Yad Vashem, 5713–1953.” The name “Yad Vashem” is taken from the book of Isaiah (56:5): “I will give them, in My house and within My walls, a monument and a name (yad vashem) better than sons or daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.”
The institution of Yad Vashem is engaged in the greatest Jewish–Israeli commemorative enterprise under the title “Each Person Has a Name,” taken from the poem by the poet Zelda, who so beautifully described the meaning of the name that a person carries with them in life and in death. This institution touches women and men, individuals and communities, in times of peace and in times of war.
I dedicate this sermon to my grandmother Feige, of blessed memory, who perished in the Holocaust; to the living hostages; to those who, tragically, did not return alive; and to all those whose names filled the roads, the notice boards, and the hearts of us all.
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Rabbi Tzipora Livneh facilitates three learning communities whose composition is diverse and includes religious and secular participants, couples and individuals, women and men. She is a personal and organizational consultant. She studies in the research track in Jewish philosophy at Bar-Ilan University. For the past ten years she has volunteered in Herzliya high schools “HaYovel” and “Rishonim” as part of FoSh (Po’alim LeShivyon – Working for Equality). She worked in education for 33 years as a history teacher and counselor in the upper grades, and served as principal of the TALI Beit Chinuch school and the middle school at HaGimnnasia HaIvrit.
As an educator, I was already a “zealot for names” back in my years working in the school system. It was important to me to know every student, each boy and each girl, by name already in the first week of the school year. I invested all my energy and strength in this. I came to realize that the process of learning names redeems us from anonymity and helps minimize the experience of alienation and meaninglessness that we encounter in many frameworks.
And so Parashat Shemot opens: “These are the names of the children of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob; each man came with his household: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah; Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin; Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher…” (Semot 1:1-4)
Each of the children of Israel who arrived in Egypt had his own name, and in this way their individuality is emphasized.
With the death of that named generation, the children of Israel become anonymous, and Pharaoh speaks of a numerous and mighty people. The biblical narrator tells us that they “were fruitful” and “swarmed,” and in this description the individuality and humanity of the Israelites disappear.
Only after Pharaoh decrees the death of all newborn sons do we once again hear of individual heroes and heroines: individual men and women who have names. These individuals are the ones who bring about the turning point. They refuse to see responsibility for what is happening as lying outside themselves. The appearance of a hero’s name is always bound up with the taking of responsibility and the performance of a courageous act, and in this way the human capacity to choose to be a partner in the struggle against evil and wickedness is expressed.
At the center of the Book of Shemot stands the redemption of Israel from Egypt. The Sages saw the preservation of names as the first and foremost of the four factors by whose merit Israel was redeemed from Egypt, as stated in Vayikra Rabbah (Vilna), Parashat Emor, chapter 32, section 5: “Rabbi Huna said in the name of Bar Kappara: For four things Israel was redeemed from Egypt: they did not change their names, they did not change their language, they did not speak slander, and there was not one among them who was licentious in sexual matters.”
It is as if this passage were written in our own days, teaching us that the repetition of the hostages’ names and our familiarity with their stories and their families contributed to our meriting, by miracle, their redemption from captivity and their return home. And we continue to face the challenge of preserving names as a component in strengthening our Jewish and Israeli identity.
Not by chance was one of the central national projects initiated by the State of Israel the establishment of the institution “Yad Vashem” to commemorate the Holocaust, founded in 1953 following a special law of the Knesset—the “Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Law – Yad Vashem, 5713–1953.” The name “Yad Vashem” is taken from the book of Isaiah (56:5): “I will give them, in My house and within My walls, a monument and a name (yad vashem) better than sons or daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.”
The institution of Yad Vashem is engaged in the greatest Jewish–Israeli commemorative enterprise under the title “Each Person Has a Name,” taken from the poem by the poet Zelda, who so beautifully described the meaning of the name that a person carries with them in life and in death. This institution touches women and men, individuals and communities, in times of peace and in times of war.
I dedicate this sermon to my grandmother Feige, of blessed memory, who perished in the Holocaust; to the living hostages; to those who, tragically, did not return alive; and to all those whose names filled the roads, the notice boards, and the hearts of us all.
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Rabbi Tzipora Livneh facilitates three learning communities whose composition is diverse and includes religious and secular participants, couples and individuals, women and men. She is a personal and organizational consultant. She studies in the research track in Jewish philosophy at Bar-Ilan University. For the past ten years she has volunteered in Herzliya high schools “HaYovel” and “Rishonim” as part of FoSh (Po’alim LeShivyon – Working for Equality). She worked in education for 33 years as a history teacher and counselor in the upper grades, and served as principal of the TALI Beit Chinuch school and the middle school at HaGimnnasia HaIvrit.