Two Minute Torah Podcast

Pinhas 5772 by Rabbi Elyse Winick

Shalom and welcome to KOACH's Two Minute Torah, a project of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. This is Rabbi Elyse Winick, Director of the KOACH/College Outreach Program.

Shakespeare wrote: What's in a name? that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. It's quite true — the name we assign to something is far less significant than its content and its character. But the power to name and the impact of a name remembered, point to greater significance than a mere label.

Consider Adam in the Garden of Eden. In Bereshit 2:20 Adam names all of the creatures in the garden, gifting them with a more defined identity, but also crafting power and dominion over them by giving them a name.

Consider the parshiyot which are known by a person's name and what greater message lies therein than simply the opening words of the parashah — Hayyei Sarah, honoring the life of Sarah even as the parashah opens with her death. Yitro, not a member of the tribe, etched with gratitude into our historical memory for the support and guidance he gave to Moshe. Korah, whose act of rebellion tore the people asunder and helped us to better understand the holiness of each and every soul.

And this week's parashah, Pinhas, in which we remember Pinhas' zealotry to protect God's honor. But the message of the name is driven even further home this week, as we read name after name, tribal heads and their descendants, Making them count as we count them. Remembering the ones who came before us and acknowledging their part in the larger whole, even if at the moment of counting, they were already but a memory.

Soon after the naming census concludes, the daughters of Tzlophhad step forward to claim a portion of land in the name of their father who, in the absence of sons, had no legal heirs. Their language is telling: Lamah yigara shem avinu mitokh mispahto? Why should the name of our father be eliminated from his family? A portion of land gave physical significance to the name, much as a physical memorial concretizes our ability to remember. Bnot Tzlophhad do great honor to their father — yet they themselves go unnamed.

We see here the power and importance of a name in granting identity — yet we also see that you can be known by your deeds and your family relationships, just as much as by your own name. We see the solidifying quality of attaching the name to something physical, yet also in this parashah we see Moshe climb to the top of Mount Evarim to look out on a land which he will never enter, and we are reminded that he will not only never have a portion in the land, but he will have no physical place in which to be remembered.

In her poem L'khol Ish Yesh Shem, Everyone has a Name, the poet Zelda embraces this challenge. She notes that naming is extraordinarily personal — each one of us has a name, a way we are known, a way we will be remembered, and there are as many ways in which that happens as there are individual people. Our obligation is to be extraordinarily attentive to the world around us, sensitive to know the people who surround us well, for who they are and for how they have transformed us and our world.

The mathematics of counting people is far more nuanced and complex than counting numbers. But if we can discover the who of counting, as much as the how and the why, then we will have begun to make people count.