Weekly D'var

PARASHAT SHEMOS
Irwin Benuck

So, I have a confession to make.  I am not sure one can make a confession in a synagogue so I will call it a disclosure.  This is not the first time I did a D’var Torah on Shemos at Elm St.  It is not even the second time; it is the third time.  Furthermore, at my old synagogue, for one of the Tikum Lelai Shavuoath I used part of this sedra in my remarks.  Not sure anyone was paying attention because it was around 2 AM. In fact, the first D’var Torah I ever did at Elm St. was Shemos.  When I spoke to my shul consultant, Walter March, after I was asked the second time to do Shemos, he responded and said, just give the same speech, nobody will know the difference or remember.  I thought about it for a while but there is so much in this sedra I decided to focus on another part of it.  Afterall, Shemos contains so much stuff including the slavery of Jews in Egypt, the edict from Pharoah to kill Jewish infant males, the midwives, the birth of Moses, the basket on the Nile with Pharoah’s daughter finding it, Moses being raised as a prince of Egypt, Moses killing the Egyptian and fleeing to Median, marrying Jethro’s daughter, becoming a Shepard, the burning bush, arguing with Hashem, going with Aaron to Pharoah, and concluding with the extra burden of work placed on the slaves.  Wow, someone could make a movie about this!   But what I want to focus on today is not the 10 Commandments Type stuff but the beginning of this week’s Torah reading.

 ואֵ֗לֶּה שְׁמוֹת֙ בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל הַבָּאִ֖ים מִצְרָ֑יְמָה אֵ֣ת יַֽעֲקֹ֔ב
אִ֥ישׁ וּבֵית֖וֹ בָּֽאוּ:
And these are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt; with Jacob, each man and his household came:  And the names of the sons follow.

Shemos does not mean Exodus but names.

I have always wondered why the Torah is so focused on genealogy, names, and places.  Just a few weeks ago we read in Vayigash, the names of the 70 who came to Egypt including children and grandchildren.  Here the sons’ names are repeated again.  I kind of understood this when I continued reading this week’s Torah reading.  
חוַיָּ֥קָם מֶֽלֶךְ־חָדָ֖שׁ עַל־מִצְרָ֑יִם אֲשֶׁ֥ר לֹֽא־יָדַ֖ע אֶת־יוֹסֵֽף:
A new king arose over Egypt who did not know about Joseph.

I love this line and use it often to describe new administrators, deans, and presidents of the institution I have been affiliated with my entire professional career.

Names, genealogy, and places are abundant in our Torah reading.  Going back to Noach, the chronology is well outlined between Shem and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And from there, we of course know the names of all the children and grandchildren of Jacob.  Even the descendants of Ishmael as well as Esau are all listed.  In fact, the first mention in the Torah of Amalek, is in Vayigash in Bereishis as a descendent of Esau.  The Torah is very clear in parsha Ki Seitzi in Devarim to remember what Amalek did to you on the way when you were leaving Egypt attacking from behind the weak.  George Santayana wrote which is enshrined on a wall in Auschwitz “The one who does not remember history is bound to live through it again.”  The corollary is also true, if one does not read history, one will not know who they are, where they came from, and where they are going.

As far as biblical places in our ancient homeland, we know of course of the promise of Eretz Yisrael by Hashem.  The cave of Machpela, now in Hebron, where Abraham paid 10 times the price to Ephon where our ancestors are buried, Mt. Moriah where Abraham was told to sacrifice Issac and now the site of our temple mount, and cities we are familiar with today such as Beer-sheba, as well as all the places where Jacob built a monument or pillar like Beth-El, and Galeed, just to name a few.

So, what do our sages and scholars say what is the reason for such attention to detail.  Rashi repeatedly teaches us that every name matters.  The genealogy to a person is like counting treasured objects.  Every name shows importance as no one is anonymous to Hashem.  Names and genealogy for Rashi are about love, memory, and covenant, not statistics.  The Rambam further elaborates that genealogies and names unfold through real people, not abstractions. He further states that the names preserve historical truth countering mythology, and the Torah insists that holiness exists within real families and societies, not legends.  Rabbi Ibn Ezra in the 12th century states the genealogy in the Torah establishes tribal legitimacy for land and priesthood.  Therefore, I can own land but never become a priest!  Finally, names and genealogy links past, present, and future.  That is why we name newborns after a loved one who has passed away as this will continue their heritage and a way of continuing their lives on earth.  This is in contrast with the Muslim religion where children are named after prophets and those who have expressed servitude to God, with many naming their first son Muhammad and subsequent sons after other prophets such as Ibrahim, Ali, and Yusuf.

So, we have this magnificent heritage which scrolls are right behind me with so much archeological findings substantiating the existence of places and persons.   Why is the bible so delegitimized by many today?  Just recently, a student submitted an essay at Oklahoma U., citing the bible as a reference and resource for her discussion.  She received a 0 out of 25.  The grading graduate student was not pleased with her source of the bible as not being evidenced base and wanted empirical facts from a scholarly article.  The issue was escalated and reversed with the graduate student losing her position as a TA.  In Oklahoma this wrong was righted but could you imagine if this were Columbia or Harvard!  It would probably have been the student who would have failed, and the TA would have been praised for holding to academic standards.  In fact, empirical evidence has been proven repeatedly in the Torah.

I learned a new concept while preparing this D’var Torah called cognitive dissonance. This is a mechanism which all of us employe when our believes differ from the facts.  The result, often times, is to alter the facts to cognitively justify the belief.  What then happens is that people double down on their belief and continue to alter the facts.

This is what has happened especially in this generation when a world forgets that Jews are indigenous people, that except for brief periods of times since the destruction of the second temple with mass murder and exiles, there were always Jews in the promised land.  Jews did not come to Israel in 1948 but were present since the time of Abraham and since Joshua completed the Exodus from Egypt 3300 years ago.  The term colonizer is even wrongly used as it means a country that sends settlers to a place and establishes political control over it. The Jews who came from Russia, Poland, and other anti-Semitic countries to make Aliyah did not come on behalf of the governments they were escaping.

Think of the most misguided line that has been chanted repeatedly since October 7: from the river to the sea.   Actually, it comes from the Tanach which we recite on Simchas Torah.  Hashem promises all the land from the Euphrates River to the Mediterranean Sea to be the boundaries of Israel.

I am very skeptical of people who say they are just anti-Zionist or against Israel, but not anti-Semitic.  One cannot separate land from religion.  It is like separating Muslims from the Haj not allowing them to make pilgrimages to Mecca or other Islam countries.  Jerusalem and Israel are mentioned hundreds of times in Jewish prayer liturgy, and multiple times every single day in our prayer books.  For so long, we were denied freedom to not only visit ancient Jerusalem but also to pray there and in other parts of Holy Land.  Following the 1948 War of Independence, approximately 58 synagogues were destroyed, desecrated, or leveled by the Jordanian occupation including the Hurva Synagogue which was first rebuilt in the 19th century and was blown up shortly after capture in 1948.  I remember climbing on the ruins but Baruch Hashem was rebuilt for the last time in 2010.

The world needs a scapegoat.  It needs to blame someone for all the woes and that has squarely rested on the Jewish people for over 2000 years and now the state of Israel.  Jean Paul Sartre stated after World War 2 that if “If the Jew did not exist, the world would invent him.”  The funny thing is scapegoat or Azazel, was first described in Vayikra in parsha Acharei where a goat during Yom Kippur would be released by the high priest into the wilderness to symbolically carry the sins of the community.  In this new secular year, let us hope that the world instead of needing a scapegoat will understand the concept of truth and take responsibilities for its actions.  Am Yisrael Chai.