Parshas Yisro 5783
The names that Moshe Rabbeinu gives his sons are surprising. If you’ve been blessed with children, you know the process—a combination of considering generations past, of what simply lands well on the ear, and of expressing some hope for the sort of life that the child will lead or will provide to others. It is this last consideration that gives rise to names like “Bracha,” “Simcha,” or “Nechama,” signaling the anticipation that this new baby will provide blessing, happiness, or comfort to those around it.
Moshe doesn’t follow this arc when naming his sons, though. As Yisro arrives in the Jewish camp with Moshe’s sons in tow, we are reminded of their names and of the meaning behind them. Moshe calls them Gershom and Eliezer, reflecting first that “גר הייתי בארץ נכריה—I was a foreigner in a foreign land” and “כי אלקי אבי בעזרי ויצילני מחרב ברעה–For the G-d of my father aided me and saved me from the sword of Pharaoh.”
In naming his sons, Moshe seems to reflect on the misfortune of being separated from the rest of his brethren, having been chased from Egypt by Pharaoh, and now living as a stranger in a strange land. Why dwell on the troubles of the past, rather than expressing the hope for a better future?
The Pardes Yosef offers an incredible explanation. Moshe did not give his children their names simply to set the historical record straight, but to provide them with an educational lesson they could never escape.
Moshe’s sons could well have grown up with an inescapable sense of loneliness. They were so different from everyone around them, monotheists in a polytheistic land. They had no family members or friends—no society around them—to normalize their experience. If only they could be surrounded by others who had similar beliefs and practices, they’d have found the promised land.
Moshe gives them names that will forever remind them of the folly of that thinking. Creating a strong community of those who will similarly serve Hashem, abide by similar dress, and speak a similar language is insufficient. Moshe states “I was a foreigner in foreign land,” not to describe his experience in Midian, separated from his family in Egypt, but to describe his experience in Egypt, separated from his ancestral homeland in the Land of Israel.
Even as Moshe lived the “good life” in Egypt—and bear in mind, that he was not subject to the oppression and servitude that others were—he was conscious of the fact that there was more to hope and strive for. The name Moshe gives his second son is the chilling sequel. “G-d saved me from the sword of Pharaoh.” The comfort and security that Moshe had enjoyed turned on a dime. Suddenly he was an outcast. In truth, he never belonged in the first place.
This is the message that Moshe wants his sons to learn and relearn every time they introduce themselves. Home is not a function of getting great numbers of Jews together so you begin to feel that you belong. Home is only one place on earth. Eretz Yisrael. Period.
When times are tough, Eretz Yisrael floats to the top of the collective Jewish consciousness. It embodies an escape from the harsh realities of the exile. But when that reality is not so harsh, it can be easy to forget. When things are comfortable, it can begin to feel like home. When the oppression is non-existent, we can slide into a deep state of belonging where we already are. But where we are is simply not home.
This is an important reflection for our time, when so many of the oppressive conditions that have been the hallmark of galus are not present. But it is an especially critical reflection on the eve of an iconic cultural event.
The Super Bowl is fun and it is exciting exciting. Watching the greatest professional athletes alive perform under immense stress is great entertainment. But we need to be on guard. Sports can easily seep into our lives and take root to the degree that we not only obsess over it, but even come to identify ourselves by it. “Eagles fan” or “Giants fan” becomes a defining feature of who we are.
Not only is it not who we are, it’s part of culture that is not home. When we have the opportunity to entertain ourselves “just like everyone else” we need to be mindful of the slippery slope of feeling too great a sense of belonging. Watching a sporting event needs to come with an ability to maintain our own autonomy and free thinking, an ability to view ourselves as being decidedly “apart” even as we enjoy that which can bind us to the culture at large.
How much time and attention does the game occupy before it even starts? How much time afterwards? Can you step away from the screen to go daven? To put the kids to bed? To help a child with homework? These are the indicators that we’re enjoying with detachment, that we aren’t becoming obsessive, that we don’t feel the need to see watch every moment of a cultural phenomenon that belongs to a culture other than our own.
Why are the names of Moshe’s children repeated here, in Parshas Yisro? Perhaps as a reminder that even in the environment of the Midbar—far from the oppressive hand of the Egyptians, ensconced in the Clouds of Glory, with food falling from the sky—they still had to press on because they were not yet home. Whenever foreign terrain begins to feel particularly familiar, particularly comfortable, and particularly entertaining, we must remember the same.