d’var torah
What’s in a Name?
Rabbi Maurice D. Harris
S Parshat Shemot
hemot (Ex. 1:1-6:1) opens with a
list of the names of the sons of
Jacob who made the journey
from Canaan to Egypt and settled
there at the invitation of the Pharaoh,
whom Joseph had advised.

It’s a curious way to open the Book of
Exodus because, in the fi nal chapters
of Genesis, we were just given an even
more detailed version of this list. But
the text wants us to note their names,
perhaps because it wants us to think
about names and their importance.

Once Shemot is fi nished listing the
names of Joseph’s brothers who came
to dwell in Egypt, it moves swiftly into
a familiar tale: A new Pharaoh “who
did not know Joseph” reacts to his
fear of the growing Hebrew population
in Egypt fi rst by enslaving them and
later by ordering to have their newborn
sons murdered. The story then gallops
forward. In a handful of verses, we are told
about the birth of a son to Moses’
parents, about his parents’ desperate
decision to send their 3-month-old
baby down the Nile in a basket in
hope that someone might show him
kindness, about the Pharaoh’s daugh-
ter rescuing and then adopting the boy
and about her naming him “Moses.”
We hear about Moses growing up
and venturing out to see his Hebrew
kinfolk at their labors, about his killing
an abusive Egyptian taskmaster and
about his fugitive fl ight into the wilder-
ness. We learn about Moses fi nding
a new home in the tent of a Midianite
priest, Jethro; about his marrying
Tzipporah, Jethro’s daughter; about
his working years as a shepherd near
the “mountain of God”; and fi nally, we
learn about his receiving the Divine
call to return to Egypt as God’s agent
of liberation.

Throughout this drama, there is some
complex stuff going on with names.

First, consider who is named
and who is not. Moses, Jethro and
Tzipporah are named. So are Aaron
(Moses’ brother) and Gershom (Moses’
and Tzipporah’s fi rstborn). Shifrah and
Puah, the midwives who refuse to
carry out Pharaoh’s infanticidal orders,
are named. Pharaoh and the Pharaoh’s
daughter are not.

Then there’s God. God is named
— sort of. At the burning bush, when
Moses asks for God’s name, God off ers
Moses several names, and each one
obscures as much as it reveals. God
tells Moses that God’s name is the tetra-
grammaton (Y-H-V-H), but God also
self-identifi es as “the God of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob,” “I Will Be What I Will
Be” and “I Am / I Will Be.” (Ex. 3:13-16)
For the humans listed above who are
named, their names conceal as much
as they reveal.

First, there’s Moses himself. We are
told that this is the name the Pharaoh’s
daughter gave him. Ex. 2:10 says,
“She named him Moses, explaining ‘I
drew him from the water.’” Moses: a
name that is presumably Egyptian, not
Hebrew. So what was this child’s previous
name, his Hebrew name, the one his
birth parents, Yocheved and Amram,
had given him? They had their baby for
three months before setting him afl oat
on the Nile. Surely they gave him a
name — a Hebrew name that the Torah
conceals. In the moment we fi rst learn
the name of our greatest prophet, we
actually only learn one of his names
— the foreign name given him by an
unnamed princess.

Let’s turn to the midwives, Shifrah
and Puah. The text doesn’t complicate
their names, but it does their identi-
ties. The Torah tells us that these two
brave women were m’yaldot ha-ivri-
yot, which can be translated either as
“Hebrew midwives” or as “midwives to
the Hebrews.” As several biblical schol-
ars have noted, they might be Hebrews
themselves, or they might belong to some
other ethnic group — possibly another
enslaved group whose job was to handle
the births and the census-keeping duties
of the enslaved workforce.

Then there’s Moses’ father-in-law,
Jethro. Or is that name Yeter (Ex. 4:18)?
Or Reuel (Ex. 2:18)? Or was it Hobab
(Num. 10:29)? Or one of the other
names by which he appears in the
Hebrew Bible? We’ll leave him aside
for the moment because there are too
many possibilities for what’s going on
with Moses’ multiple-named father-in-
law to explore here.

Finally, Shemot gives us an unnamed
Pharaoh and never tells us his daugh-
ter’s name either. (Centuries later,
in midrash, the rabbis taught that
Pharaoh’s daughter’s name was Batya,
but in the Torah’s own telling her name
is unknown.)
The Hebrew Bible is generally not
shy about telling us the names of
emperors who oppressed our ances-
tors. We hear about Nebuchadnezzar,
Shalmaneser and Akhashverosh. In
Shemot, perhaps hinting to us that
if the text wanted to it could reveal
this Pharaoh’s name, we read that
the Hebrew slaves built a city called
Rameses, the name of more than one
Pharaoh. So the decision to conceal
the Pharaoh’s name and that of his
daughter is deliberate. We are left to
wonder why.

Perhaps one of the juiciest questions
for us to puzzle with as we re-read the
story of the Exodus each year has to
be: What’s in a name? ■
Rabbi Maurice D. Harris is associate
director for thriving communities and
Israel aff airs specialist at Reconstructing
Judaism in Wyncote. He is the author of
three books, including “Moses: A Stranger
Among Us.” The Board of Rabbis of Greater
Philadelphia is proud to provide diverse
perspectives on Torah commentary for the
Jewish Exponent. The opinions expressed
in this column are the author’s own and do
not refl ect the view of the Board of Rabbis.

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