Adam Didn’t Name the Animals the Way You Think

The shalah explains the that was not naming the animals in the conventional sense. In other words, he wasn't giving them names. That wasn't what was impressive. Rather, he was identifying their names. What does it mean he was identifying their names? If they weren't named yet, how did they already have names? So, there's a concept. In fact, Rashi alludes to it in paras. He says the world was created through lashes through the holy tongue. What does that mean? The world was created through the the holy tongue. Well, it says and God spoke and he said, "Let there be light. Let there be a firmament and so on and so forth. Hashem spoke the world into being." We call the act of creation speech metaphorically. Or perhaps our speech is a metaphor for true speech, which is Hashem's creativity. And it's not just called speech because it's expression. It's uh creativity. It's called speech because actually it's it's comprised of the act of creation is comprised of building blocks, energetic building blocks. Um the 22 letters of the olive base, each one constitutes a distinct energy and a distinct wavelength. The way maybe I would explain it to some people is think about like the periodic table of elements where you have that chart of all the different atoms and every everything that you'll see in this physical world is made of of a combination of some of those elements some of those atoms. So this is like you imagine there's 22 of these building blocks and then when they're arranged into you know like atoms are arranged into molecules. So think about letters that are combined into words and uh the unique combinations create these unique beings. So for instance in the meda um when Adam says to Hashem he says what's that and he says that's a sh an axe. So what was doing? wasn't just saying like somebody had to do in every language. If you think about it, in every language, somebody had to say, "Ah, that call that an ox." And someone said, "No, call that el Toro." Right? And in every language, it's just a convention. It's just an agreement. Everyone says, "Okay, fine. We're going to call that whatever, you know, whatever we agreed to call it." That's not what he was doing. He was looking, imagine somebody looks at this water and they're like, "Oh, okay. I see. What is that?" Um, that's two hydrogens's and an oxygen, H2O, right? Imagine if they could look at the water and they could see that, oh, what is that water really? It's not this liquid stuff splashing around in my cup. It's actually made of these little clusters of building blocks. There's two hydrogens's and an oxygen. You know that little Mickey Mouse face? You know what I'm talking about? Chemistry. You know what I'm talking about. It's like the big circle with the two little circles. Looks like a Mickey Mouse. Imagine if somebody could look at this and say, "Oh, that's not water. It's not vaser. It's not aqua. It's not O. It's it's two hydrogens's and an oxygen. Pretty impressive, right? Well, would look at the water and he would say that's a me and a yud and a me. In other words, he wasn't calling things by a name that he made up. He was identifying the formula of energetic building blocks that actually come together to make these things. So when he said that the ax is a shin vav, he saw the way that the axe is created is you take a shin energy and a vav energy and a energy shin v. In fact, the medish says that after named the animals, which we read about explicitly here in the verses. It says he named the animals, but he didn't end there. Hashem asked, "Since you're so good at this, what's your name?" Think about the self-awareness here. Adam said, "My name, well, I'm from the Adama. I'm from the earth. My name is Adam." And he named himself, which again doesn't mean he gave himself a name. It means he correctly identified the combination of energetic building blocks that come together to create his essence. So then, Hashem says to Adam, he says, "What's my name?" Talk about pressure, right? Hashem says, "What's my Hey, you so good at this. What's my name? What are you going to call me?" Which again doesn't mean that Adam is going to make up a name for Hashem. It means that Adam has to identify the actual name that Hashem has. Now, we know Hashem has a lot of names. You know those papers that your kids bring home from school, we call sheamus. Sheamus literally means names because a paper has hashem's name written on it. So, you can't throw it in the garbage. God forbid. You have to it has to be buried. So, I'm sure everyone here has a nice box full of homework papers from your kids, right? Okay. In fact, Mazov, you have more Sheamus right here. Get a box. Okay. Um, yeah. >> Where we come from, this isn't Sheamus. >> Oh, this is not Sheamus. Okay, fine. All right. Well, ask your local Orthodox rabbi. All right. So, um, >> folks, I mean, okay, but ask your L. So, Hashem says, "What's my name?" So Adam tells him, "Your name," and I'm not going to pronounce it because we don't pronounce Hashem's names unless we're saying a full verse, but he says, "Your name is Alfaly." The name that's spelled Alfaly um because you are you are the master of all of your creations. So that named means master. So he called him that name which means the master of all of your creations. Hashem said that you're right. That is now Hashem has other names as well but that's definitely one of the real names. Okay. So based on this we understand what was doing that was impressive. He wasn't just handing out names like random names. He was identifying the correct names that were already attached to these animals. Not just attached to these animals, but were the think about it like the letters are pathways. They're conduits through which the life force of each of these animals enters the world. And depending on the the these pa these pathways that will create different types of animals.