12: What's in a Name?

[Music] hi rabbi Deborah Orlowski here welcome to the rabbi Orlowski show and whether you're listening on tour anytime YouTube iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts we're happy to welcome you aboard thank you for listening thank you for watching thank you for your support and we appreciate it listen you have nothing without an audience thousands of people out there are watching this I've gotten some amazing emails of people who tell me the physic that they're getting from this program and and what it means them and you know I can I tell you I do not take this lightly I don't take it seriously but I don't take it lightly because I live in a trail where there are so many I bought him who would give anything to have this course that I have to be able to speak to an audience like this you know you see people moved there it's felidae it's a whole different bonum and thank you know they they give a share in between I admire if two three people you know one sleeping once deaf the other ones dead you know and this is their whole hears you always say oh yeah am I sure I said am I sure today what I was gonna do am I sure you know that's everything and the fact that I have this opportunity I appreciate you taking our time from your life to share it with me and and that's it well of course a tough of course a tough that that you're allowing me to be a part of your life alright we start a new safer safer schmoes or if you live in certain areas seifish motive yeah when I was growing up and I came from you have to remember this was a an earlier time in Jewish history yeah so we referred to the five books of the hummus not as gracious most value crop amid and Vario we refer to them as Genesis Exodus Leviticus numbers and Deuteronomy and later we learn to give it the appropriate names you know when I used to teach in certain ballet Truvia shira's I used to explain the most important thing is to become Torah literate and if not at least get enough information to bluff your way through so people think that you're not a B D yeah so if instead of saying Rambam you say rum rum rum bum rum bum instead of saying the run bond you say rum bun they'll pick you up in a second so we used to the practice Rambam Rambam Rambam rum bun rum bun and rumba rumba braum because the important thing is to sound like you know what you're doing really crystal used to do a take-off on Fernando Lamas to people whose names mean nothing to anybody under the age of 50 and he has dev his line that he always would say as Fernando Lamas the most important thing is to look good and it's more important to look good than to feel good and you look marvelous malas so at times it's more important that sound like you know what you're talking about that they actually know what you're talking about this was an insight that was actually shared by the wizard of ours with the Scarecrow when he said to him there are people who have no more brains than you do but they have something you don't have a college degree so from the University of Oz I give you a college degree in a square plus B squared equals C squared our genius excuse me you know that would knock me out there but this is uh this is important to pick up the things so you learn how to say she British Mosley Exodus you can't come in and say that this week we start reading the book of Exodus and yet interestingly enough the gomorian SOTA discusses the names of the commotion and if you see the way Rashi quotes it he never says British rose for you ever made by hand by rim he refers to them by the names of the guevara and safer schmoes is called safe a gula the book of redemption when you think about it the name Exodus is a lot closer to the name that the hosel gave it than to schmoes why do we call it shmo so obviously we take the first significant word and the posix the Eila snows you don't do Fela just like the Dewey Decimal System no they still use that I don't know anybody even knows when I was growing up there was was called the library and the library had actual books in it and if you are to get a book it was filed by the Dewey Decimal System yeah which signed numbers to everything on for various reasons but when they would put the names of the titles on the title cards they would leave off a and that obviously so very low of course it's not as simple as that obviously because when you think about it there's a partial cold toll dos the Eila told those ever have been it's Clark there's a low todos I've robbed I've remotely deserts book and that's called todos there's another part called Ella told us Noah and that's called Noah at that Cole told us so why is that one called Noah and this one is called I've Rama it's obviously there's more that goes into this consideration than just it being the first significant work yeah and more Ella corneum we don't mind calling that partial amor we never have a partial cultivated a bear yeah well in any event there's there's obviously a certain logic to it so we call it safer most or seifish mode I asked my students once what is a significant of coin masae for seifish motive and without hesitating one of the students said because it's when God smote the Egyptians I'd certainly clever you know you got to give points for creativity you know I was giving an introductory shear to Gomorrah explaining all the different terms and then afterwards I gave them a test so one of the questions was what is a Bryson Bryson is Tenaya texts that did not make it into the official Mishnah right Rebbe and his you know the the 10 a.m. all went through all of the various versions to make text versions existed and took either the one that they felt was most authoritative or they rewrote it or whatever it was and that became the Mishnah and all the other ones that didn't make it into the Mishnah were called Bryce's outside and they were collected separately so I asked my test what's a Bryson and this guy wrote the little Mishnah that couldn't I regret it I'd be like a granite you know we were doing get in that year there's this same kid you know and the Camorra has a long discussion and when it talks about bringing a get from reckon so it says where is recommend there's many different views so I asked on the test where is recommend the same kid wrote where isn't it I gave him credit you gotta get credit for creativity that's my feeling you know so he smoked God smote the Egyptians yeah that's obviously more than that the obviously more than that there's a whole piece in the organelle yo that this as this there's uh there's a measure that says Vanessa went down with their names and came back up with their names so what does that mean their names doesn't mean have a name it was a song in the 60s I mentioned this partly because has dude this year probably because when I wanted to learn how to play the guitar the only thing I learned how to play was the introduction to this song by a guy called Johnny rivers called secret agent man the introduction goes Dean didn't than India no no no no no no no no no no no no and that was the only part that I learned and when you're trying to show off your guitar skills and you just keep going dan Durda nananananana nananananana after a while you lose your money okay yeah you know you can't really wow a crowd like that yeah the ironic thing is when I would pick it up and I just strum and pretend that I was singing Carlebach everybody enjoyed it very much no idea what I was doing but I just got told this story he's got enough to do with anything except it ties in with this my very last regional convention as Long Island director of NCIS wide open camp May more than weekend and we brought the ass for you Sheva band for the concert you know to a concert and to play the music for the for the banquet you know so at one point one of the guys gave me a trumpet I don't know how to play the trumpet but you know you're blowing it and push the keys him how hard could that be you know and I was playing it a little bit I'm playing a won't ramble along with it you know and at one point generally gave me a pair of sunglasses hats you know sitting you playing at one point voice destroy he goes take it away rabbi Dave and everybody stops and what can I tell you sounded great who would know I have Anna listen anyway so so yeah secret agent man so the words go like this secret agent man secret agent man they've given you a number and taken away your name dinner dinner dude you understand the secret agent man he became he became your identity is not important you were given a number and that's what you do when you want to strip away somebody's identity you take away their a number and you eat their name and you give them a number so they do in prison give your number that's all you are your this number there is add in that you're not allowed to count Jews now the count Jews why because mispar which is number is related to the word satire which is a border it limits a number limits once I give you a number that's who you are a name with a name as has the power we say Apothic but they're the initials of my name in it because the name can can represent that we're pussing and Tanakh we have endless possibilities we we become part of the BRE itself essential a number means you're number 37 if you're number 37 then you are not number 36 and you're not number 38 and this is where you are you a Moog bowel you are seriously limited and that's what happens when you want to enslave people you have to take away their sense of identity you have to give them a number and vinay you sir l down in mitzrayim lost their names lost their names when you lose your name you lose your identity because what are you in Hebrew a word is not just something random in English we have a table and we have a chair and if you called the table a chair and the chair a table it wouldn't make any difference what does it make what these words are why should they mean anything Mel Brooks and Khurana used to do its routine the 2000 year old man so he would ask him different questions as if this guy's lived to the past 2,000 years so say he asked them where the words come from so he says I don't mind I pay you know this is really this is shower he's a shower when you turn on the water cuz Shh and they're going it's too hard to go how shower he says what about an egg it's an egg if you listen very carefully is it chicken is laying an egg he goes hey give a few movies and then he says what about a nose why do you call it knows and knows he says why cause it's a nose otherwise would be your mouth and that more or less explains it you know much inking by us we call water maíam and you know that you know the this chemical so the chemical makeup of my name is h2o yeah it's two hydrogen and one oxygen so you have a mem mem and you would for example this is some of the there are people who make this observation yaad the gamma Tauri equals 14 because if you look at your fingers 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 yeah there's different ways of looking at these things different reasons why you know a word has a significance but the word is closer to a strip of DNA it's filled with information if you know it the name that you have reveals who you are what your potential is where you're going on so many things yeah I mean parents may name a child they don't understand the significance of that and and how it affects you know people for their entire existence you know I heard one said Oh anytime para Alan time being getting to vu in this world when you name a child cuz Rockwood gives you that that insight yeah to be able to know to see beyond to see potential and that's why you see that and Tanakh when they used to name their children there was you know though I you can't you go and always understand that why you would have two kids in name one L dud and one made odd you know you know I'm not sure exactly what the with you know how each thing went but you find that kind of thing more often than one would imagine you know the names and the variations on those names yeah but a name gives you that identity when you become an avid you don't have an identity and Harriet Beecher Stowe who wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin in fact when when she wrote that book says it Rhoda it lit a thousand fires the abolitionist camp when Abraham Lincoln met her he said so you're the little lady who started this war and what she did is she prevented presented a novel about things that were actually taking place and one of them is it starts over the Uncle Tom and he's married he's got kids and the guy has to sell you know his his assets along with his slaves and so nobody wanted to buy the whole family they got to write it up because there's no there's no ulis by slaves this is true also but never cannot it yeah they have a children those children belong to the to the owner they don't then I considered his children is there's no nothing's official over there so so you go Dan you become a slave and that's why in parsha spin class when it lists the year course I could borrow he'll put his name UK and and every and every family yeah yeesh be yeah because he says I'm testifying that the hijos are clear because Rashi says huh dead control over their bodies they couldn't take control of their wives they were they were there was slaves could do whatever they wanted so that means that on some level the Jewish people had to be able to maintain themselves in dehumanizing situations which by the way has been a hallmark of Jewish life Lucey Davidowitz in the war against the Jews maintains that the Germans did not originally plan genocide the wanna see conference came later in the war they were sure that if they pack the Jews tightly into into ghettos without enough food and not enough drinking water and not enough medicine that they'll just kill each other they'll rip each other apart they couldn't anticipate the fact that Jews knew how to survive in these kind of difficult situations and prop up everybody else and help everybody else they weren't anticipating that because we were able to maintain our names we would maintain our identity we knew who we were and what we were the Egyptians wanted to strip that away from us take away our names and so you find that throughout the parsha there's so much emphasis on names Hashem comes to Moshe and says take out the Jewish people from Egypt and he says they're gonna well know what your name is what's your name they want to know your name when he comes to pyro he says Hashem sent us goes who is he I don't know this name I don't recognize his name yeah there were two people fighting motion went to break them up yeah when I told their names we know they're doesn't know we're up there when I told their names and the to me I'll dice one is called Chiffre and when it's called puah those weren't their names who is your heaven in there and it was Miriam but we don't don't get told their names Moshe finally gets a name but it's not his real name his real name was Tuvia yeah he gets the name that bas Poirot gives him Moshe Kimi should see him in a Miami is drawn out of the water it's amazing this this attempt to be able to find our names to be able to find out who we are to be able to define our identity such a hard thing Who am I Who am I in my essence and we're good at defining ourselves in context I'm somebody's wife for him somebody's husband or I'm somebody's father I'm somebody's mother I'm somebody sunroom somebody's daughter I'm somebody's brother I'm somebody's sister I work for this person I live here I Drive that we're very good at defining ourselves by externalities but who are we on one server Moshe Purim but the reason that the marshal has Al used for Jahannam is fire is because when you burn something you release the gases and you vaporize the liquids and you're left with nothing but the essence who are you don't tell me who you are in the context of everybody else as the mistletoe Sherman says Makarova sober Alamo in your world you have your own world how hard it is for people to figure out who they are this is one of my lines I use all the time to prove it because I'm using right now yeah most people do with most people do because that's what most people do you want to think about it you want to rethink the way everybody's doing things resource elantra did that we so salon two looked at the way society was going and he said this can't be right we got to change this we got to do something else he he was willing to look and see and say well we can do better than this but most people don't most people do what most people do because that's what most people do that's the question here if they ask yourself what's my name what's my shame Who am I really yeah and you can you can see people sometimes in the name is so so appropriate at times you don't appreciate it maybe they're not living up to their potential maybe they haven't maximized it but a name every name I don't know who coined it but America used to say is I'm Marika an empty nation doesn't doesn't stand for anything per se yeah British is ish Brit you know the people of the confident or if you will the Commonwealth I think the fact that Russia is called Russia is not by chance yeah and Poland they say Poland here we will stay Jews stayed in Poland for a thousand years when you when you see that that there's a word that word has a meaning that word is there to tell me something the word is there to be able to give me direction and safer schmoes is called seifish most not just because the first word second point yeah but to tell us that to go from goes to gula means that we have to get our names back not to figure out who we are Jews today so often allow the non-jewish world to define them or in Israel yeah the non-religious world works to define us and we are who they want us to be it's a it's an amazing thing in Israel you know everybody plays the role that's been assigned to it it's just amazing I think it was in curious y'all it was someplace over there where there were a lot of Satsuma and they want to make their own school district to be able to provide for their you know children who had special needs and they said absolutely not so the next day thousands of Satmar children showed up at the public school to register and they said you know what maybe you would do better to have your own School District because they didn't look at it from the point of view of let's you know all right let's see how we could solve this you know I I don't want to get into all the issues of the draft but trust me if every her ad showed up at the draft board tomorrow and said we demand that you draft us like you draft every other Israeli you'd see how quickly they would work out something but we don't do that because you know they assigned us a role and we play into that role and everybody plays the role that they're assigned and everybody's so predictable you know sharone knew the the people in Gaza and the settled movement better than anybody you know he had been a part of them he'd helped start them so when he said we're gonna pull out of Gaza he knew exactly was gonna happen we'll never leave we'll make him we'll make a silhouette over then without screaming and yelling come and get us we'll make a war you know and it was this look they're gonna make a war said if they made me the spokesman I would have said we moved to Gaza because you asked us to we lived here we built homes we built businesses we we died we buried our dead and now if the government wants us to leave we'll leave because we're loyal citizens but you're not gonna throw us out on the street just build us new communities and we'll pick up our sofrito era and we'll pick up our furniture and we'll dig up our dead and we'll move to the new community but you're not gonna throw us out in the street loyal citizens who did what we were he has to do and everyone in the country would have said that makes sense you know how things work in this country they still wouldn't have built those towns they'd still be in Gaza but everybody plays the role that they're assigned because to be an individual to be able to think outside of the box not a groupthink to be able to to be able to look at it from my point of view what is my name what am I supposed to be doing how am I supposed to handle this that's a challenge it's a challenge that every one of us has to face that's a challenge that every one of us can't face goula call me shaba daba shame Omer maybe Google olam everyone who says something over in somebody's name brings the goals of the world why because those words belong to him not to me I have to put them back where they belong that's what Google is Google is taking something and putting it where it belongs and that's what we have to do we have to figure out who we are and where we belong and discuss how we can get to be where we're supposed to be and be the people we're supposed to be that is our challenge are we up to it sure we are all we have to do is figure out who we are what is Eric and when we do that then we can move forward well that's it for this week we start a whole new safer and safer smote and we will mote the Egyptians and say fresh most names we're gonna find out who we are and move forward if you want to find out more about this show you could check the real ASCII that comp slash podcast if you would like to make a comment on this particular show every Alaska dot-com slash podcast slash 12 if you want to find out about my upcoming schedule for Alaska comm slash events I have Shabbos at the beginning of February which I have dates available around then and I have an event at the end of February I have some dates around then and if you want to contact me directly feel free to reach out to Rabbi Orlowski talk real askee dot-com / contact and looking forward to hearing from all of you everyone have a great Shabbos and again whoever you are as we used to do in romper room they would hold a little mirror I see Bobby and I see Timmy and I see you know Siri and I say yeah so every one of you out there is special every one of you out there is a unique individual as the cause I'll tell us why does everybody look different because everyone has a different purpose in this world everyone has a different name and every one of us needs to go out there and find our destiny Shabbos [Music] [Applause] [Music]