Two Minute Torah Podcast

Miketz 5771 by Rabbi Ilana Garber

Shalom! My name is Rabbi Ilana Garber, and I'm a rabbi at Beth El Temple in West Hartford, CT. Welcome to KOACH's Two-Minute Torah Ñ a project of the College Department of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.

Naming children is never easy. I have a sixteen-month old son and another child on the way, and for months now I've been stressing about what we'll name the baby. I can't imagine what it was like for Adam back in the Garden of Eden when he was naming all of the cattle, birds, and wild beasts. It's quite a responsibility to give someone or something else a name, and it says a lot about who you are and what your personal values are.

So as we look at this week's Torah portion, Miketz, and we see that Joseph has two sons, I think the names he gives his sons tell us a lot about Joseph. He names his first son, Menashe, and in the Torah (Genesis 41:51) it explains that to Joseph the name means "God has made me forget completely my hardship and my parental home." In the next verse, Joseph names his second son Ephraim, meaning, "God has made me fertile in the land of my affliction."

Yikes — those are some heavy names for these two young boys to carry with them throughout their lives! So what is Joseph trying to communicate here? Did he really forget completely his hardship and his parental home? If he had forgotten completely, why did he name his kid something that would constantly remind him of what he forgot? And while Ephraim's name seems a bit more hopeful, in that it speaks of fertility, the name still reflects Joseph's affliction! Again, it's a name that carries a painful reminder.

I don't think Joseph is trying to forget anything. Perhaps the Torah is setting us up for the future encounter between Joseph and his brothers when he will very much remember all that they did to him and he'll be sure they remember as well. I wonder if the message here that the Torah is trying to teach us through Joseph's naming of his sons, is that we might be able to move on after hardship and pain — and in fact, we should try to move on — but we may never be able to forget the afflictions in our lives. Some would call this learning to forgive when you can't forget. I think that's an incredibly important value, one that ultimately Joseph demonstrates when he tests his brothers and their loyalty to each other and to their father, but then he eventually reveals his identity to them and in the end he rescues them from the famine.

This is a lesson we might take with us today. The burdens we carry with us in life — our past hardships and afflictions — weigh us down only as long as we let them. Instead, if we let our past experiences help shape our future actions in positive ways, we can make a difference in our lives and in the lives of our friends and family. In naming his sons as he did, Joseph allows his past to serve as a constant reminder to him (despite what seems to be suggestion to the contrary), but ultimately he is inspired by his past to do good for others. So may we be inspired as well.