Parshas Shemos 5785 - "Ve'eleh Shemos Bnei Yisroel" - the preciousness of a Jewish name

00:00 This was during the difficult years in Russia, when Communist decrees made it impossible to teach children and yeshivos, cheders, and mikvaos were shut down. In those hard days, during the time of the Frierdiker Rebbe, after the Frierdiker Rebbe left Russia—or, as one might say, after he was expelled from Russia—after his imprisonment, everything that happened, and the Geulah of 12 Tammuz. In those years, it was [unclear], as was recounted in later years, an extremely difficult time for the chassidim who remained in Russia. The Rebbe was in another country, in Latvia, for example, during those years, and these were very hard years for the chassidim. There was literal mesirus nefesh for Yiddishkeit, literal mesirus nefesh for education. Again and again, they would take away the young men, the Temimim, and the teachers. Anyone involved in education, in matters of purity and spreading purity, or in spreading Yiddishkeit, was immediately sent to Siberia. That was how the persecution continued. These were bitter, difficult years in which anyone who held fast to Yiddishkeit was persecuted. In those days, the chassidim reached a point of actual mesirus nefesh. Every day, they lost more chassidim who were arrested and sent to Siberia, while others

01:40 never returned at all. It was terribly difficult and bitter. They did not know what would happen, how it would end, or where it was all leading. So the leaders of the chassidim who were there at the time gathered together: the older chassidim and those who ran the institutions, Chevras Temimim, and all those activities. On one occasion, they wrote a very bitter letter to the Frierdiker Rebbe about what was happening. There was this feeling: How can we be left like this? They felt utterly lost and abandoned. Where could they turn from here? It was an extremely difficult letter that the chassidim wrote to the Frierdiker Rebbe about the situation in Russia. The Frierdiker Rebbe then wrote a letter in reply, [unclear], and it reached them by a roundabout route. In those days, writing a letter was itself an entire undertaking that called for mesirus nefesh, because all correspondence was censored. For the letter he sent to reach its destination, it had to be passed along by various means, and things had to be concealed through various hints. In any event, the Frierdiker Rebbe’s reply reached the chassidim. The letter opened with the words, “Each and every one of you is dear to me in my body and my soul,” or “in my body and my spirit.” That was how it opened; those were

03:18 the words of the letter. It began, “Each and every one of you is dear to me in my body and my soul.” He wrote that he saw their mesirus nefesh and saw how, in the situation they faced, they were putting their lives on the line, and so on. The Frierdiker Rebbe ended the letter with guidance, instructions, and blessings for their service of Hashem. But [unclear], as chassidim related afterward, this became known through the chossid Reb Nissan Nemenov. Reb Nissan Nemenov was, as is well known, one of the principal activists and mashpi’im. He was there during those difficult years of persecution. He was pursued for most of that time, but whenever it was possible, he was among the leading chassidim who ran Chevras Temimim and the institutions, and he served as a mashpia. He was one of the pillars of the chassidim at that time. Reb Nissan and other older chassidim related that when they received the letter, it was truly a letter that brought them back to life. It infused the work they were doing then with new vitality, new fervor, and new strength. They held many farbrengens, week after week and month after month, dwelling in particular on the words, “Each and every one of you is dear to me in his body and his soul.” Yes, to hear those words, the preciousness the Rebbe

04:51 expressed in writing: “Each and every one of you is dear to me in his body and his soul.” Every chossid is precious, in body and soul. And Reb Nissan pointed out that the Rebbe even put “body” before “soul.” One might have thought that when mesirus nefesh is demanded, the main thing is the soul, the main thing is Torah, and what happens to a chossid physically, to his body, is not so important, G-d forbid. That is why the Rebbe wrote the letter in precisely this way, putting “body” before “soul.” It emphasizes something we must know: to the Rebbe, the body is precious, physical well-being is precious, and what happens in a person’s physical life matters. And although there are times when one reaches a point where one must give one’s life—after all, the Rebbe encouraged chassidim to uphold Yiddishkeit with mesirus nefesh—nevertheless, “Each and every one of you is dear in his body and his soul.” The letter stayed with them throughout all the difficult years in Russia, right up until they left Russia, and the handwritten letter, in the Rebbe’s holy handwriting, remains with the family to this day. This idea is one of the foundations of Parshas Shemos. We find it when the Jewish people are in exile. That is what Parshas Shemos is about. The entire book of Shemos, as the Midrash says, is called “the Book of Geulah,” because it tells how the Children of Israel went from darkness to light, from exile to Geulah. And yet, the portion of

06:15 Parshas Shemos itself deals with exile, not Geulah. Here we are not yet speaking about the miracles of the Geulah, the plagues, the Exodus from Egypt, and so on. Parshas Shemos is a parsha of exile: “And these are the names of the Children of Israel who came to Egypt.” This is where the exile begins. The Jews enter Egypt and begin to suffer under the exile. As the parsha itself relates: “The Egyptians made the Children of Israel labor with crushing severity.” There was all the crushing labor, the mortar and bricks, the hardships, until “the Children of Israel groaned because of the labor”; until Moshe Rabbeinu himself cried out to Hakadosh Boruch Hu: How will this end? As we find at the end of the parsha, in Moshe Rabbeinu’s complaint: specifically “since I came to Pharaoh,” since he came to redeem the Jews from Egypt, the situation had only grown harder and more bitter. “He has harmed this people, and You have not saved Your people”—the bitter words at the end of Parshas Shemos. Parshas Shemos, then, is a parsha that gives expression to exile. At the same time, the Torah is arranged in an order that provides direction in serving Hashem. The Torah is an ordered path of light; the word Torah is related to hora’ah, instruction. Parshas Shemos is a parsha from which we must draw guidance and strength precisely in the difficult times of exile. When we pause at the very beginning of the parsha, at the first verse, “And these are the names of the Children of Israel who came to Egypt,” where the Torah tells us about the Jews’ arrival in Egypt, we see that the whole parsha is called Parshas Shemos because of this verse. And not only

07:49 that: the entire book is called the Book of Shemos, the Book of Names. We need to understand what lies within that word. What is the word “names” meant to express? Why is a parsha about exile called “Shemos”? What is the deeper meaning of this name? Why is the entire book, which deals with the Jews’ passage from exile to Geulah, called the Book of Shemos? What is there in a name? What is a name, that it is so precious, so important, and so profound? Everything revolves around the word “Shemos”; what does it express? Indeed, we find the Midrash discussing why the Torah repeats the names of the Children of Israel—we already know them. We already learned in Bereishis what the tribes were called. Why does the Torah repeat their names? It is surely deliberate. What is the point of repeating the names of the Children of Israel? And not only their names, but also the “seventy souls.” We know that too; we already learned it in Parshas Vayigash. Almost the very same words appear there. Parshas Vayigash says, “And these are the names of the Children of Israel who came to Egypt, Yaakov and his sons.” It is already written in Parshas Vayigash. Why does the Torah repeat it here? There are several explanations. The first

09:09 is Rashi’s precise explanation. Rashi says, in his beautiful commentary, in the first Rashi on the parsha: “Because of His love for the Jewish people,” He counts them as they leave and as they enter, by number and by name. And as Rashi explains, the Jewish people are compared to stars, and with the stars, too, we find that Hakadosh Boruch Hu has a special love for them. As the verse says, “He brings out their host by number; He calls each one by name.” He brings out the stars by number and by name. Yes, every Jew is compared to the stars. Therefore, when they enter Egypt, Hakadosh Boruch Hu, out of His love for them, counts them by number and by name. That is why the Rebbe returns to these words: “He calls each one by name,” “He brings out their host by number.” He brings out the stars by number, and “He calls each one by name.” These are the two aspects: the number, as the parsha says, “seventy souls,” and “He calls each one by name”—the names of the tribes that the Torah repeats in the parsha. And as is well known, it is written in the sefarim that when you look closely at Rashi, you see that in every book of the Torah he brings out the preciousness of the Jewish people. It is a remarkable thing we find in Rashi. The Rebbe spoke about this once. Yes, it is remarkable: in every book of the Torah—at the beginning of each of the five books, Bereishis, Shemos, Vayikra, Bamidbar, and Devarim—there is

10:42 Rashi’s first comment, in which he emphasizes how dear the Jewish people are. And here too, in this parsha, we find how dear the Jewish people are. The Rebbe once spoke about the fact that, as the sefarim say, Rashi is an acronym for “Rabban Shel Yisroel,” the teacher of the Jewish people. We do not only study Rashi as a commentator who explains every aspect of Torah, the Gemara, and so on; Rashi is also the teacher of the Jewish people. He speaks as their sage. And we see this plainly at the beginning of every book of the Chumash. In any case, that is Rashi’s explanation. But we need to understand two things in his words: what are “by number” and “by their names”? Why is the dearness of the Jewish people expressed specifically through these two things, number and names? The Rebbe once explained the central point and expressed it beautifully. First of all, we are speaking to a child—Rashi explains the plain meaning of the verse. And a child understands that there are ways a father shows love. There are many ways. When a father and mother want to express their love and affection for their children, they can give a child a gift, play with him, or learn with him. It depends on the child’s age. There are all

12:09 kinds of ways to express affection. But there is an expression of affection that applies at every age and in every situation. When a father wants to express affection for a child through a gift, the kind of gift he gives depends on the child’s age. If he gives a small child something that adults consider valuable, the child will not understand it at all, because it is not important to him. And the reverse is also true. The same applies to learning and wisdom, or to play—each according to his age and character. There are also things you can give only when you are close to each other; when you are far apart, the whole thing does not fit. But a name and a number—a child understands that counting expresses importance. He sees it in his own life: when he has something important, he counts it. A child has all sorts of things, his own world and his own new discoveries, but he knows that something precious to him he counts again and again: how many he has, how many candies, how many nuts, how many almonds. He counts once and then again, because the number expresses importance. And so it is with a name. The child sees in his own life that when his parents want to express their love, sometimes [unclear] they call him

13:28 by his name. They say his name, without any title. They call him “Yankele,” “Moishele”; they call him by name, and the name expresses affection for the child more than any other title. In any case, we see this openly, plainly, in the physical world: even a small child understands that a name and a number express importance. All the more so when we look at halachah. Halachah says that something counted individually is not nullified. Counting expresses a special importance. Ordinarily, something is nullified in a majority, but something counted individually cannot be nullified. The fact that it is counted—not sold by weight, but counted item by item—shows that it has importance in its own right, and therefore it cannot be nullified among other things. The same applies to something that has a name. Halachah teaches that something with a name is not subject to the law of shichchah, the forgotten produce left for the poor. Under that law, if a person forgets fruit in the field, it is left for the poor. But if the fruit has a distinctive name, even if he forgot it, it is not considered shichchah. Its distinctive name means that the law of shichchah does not apply to it, even though the person did in fact forget it. So we see that there is something special about a name and a number. But the question is: what do they express? What is their spiritual meaning?

14:47 What are these two things, number and name? When we examine them, we see something wonderful that expresses an aspect of the service of Hashem by Jews during exile. A number shows that something is important, but on the other hand, it does not express the difference between one thing and another. This is one, and another one, and another one, and another one; many individual units make up a large number. But each one is one—no more and no less. In other words, a number expresses a common point shared by all these different things. A person does not count unrelated things together. He counts things that belong together: all the apples, all the candies, all those things, and that is how the total grows. Each thing is important, each one is counted, but each one is one, no more and no less. This is what is equal in every person. A name, by contrast, is exactly the opposite. When you say a name, it is a particular name: this one is Reuven, this one is Shimon, this one is Levi. A name has meaning and content; it expresses importance, a defining quality,

16:06 a distinct character, a virtue—something particular that expresses what is unique to that person, what he specifically possesses. And here, with the tribes, we find, as the sefarim say, that each tribe’s name expresses something particular. This is what we are saying: when a Jew enters exile and finds himself among the Jewish people in Egypt, mixed in among millions and multitudes, he must know that he has a name. “And these are the names of the children of Israel.” Here the Torah says: when Jews live in exile and enter into its bitterness—“Yosef died, and all his brothers”—it becomes far more bitter, the doubled and redoubled darkness of exile. The Torah says, “He brings out their host by number; He calls them all by name.” Every star, every Jew, has both a number and a name. In other words, there is an essential point, the pintele Yid, through which every Jew is a Jew, and nothing can break him, crush him, nullify him, or weaken his Jewishness. That is the number. Every Jew is a Jew, bound utterly to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. And every Jew is a complete Jew, no more and no less. It is the very same thing in everyone: the yechidah of the soul, the pintele Yid, the essence of the soul, which remains whole in every condition and circumstance, at every time and in every place a Jew may find himself. That is the meaning of the number. At the same time, one might think: granted, in exile the point of mesirus nefesh, the pintele Yid, remains, but

17:33 that is because of the point of mesirus nefesh. There are also the particular strengths each person has: his talents, his abilities, and the things that are his own, through which he is unique. One person’s path is in Torah, another’s is in avodah, and another’s is in acts of kindness. There is Yissachar and there is Zevulun. Reuven represents sight, and Shimon represents hearing. This is each person’s individual service. And of this we say, “They descended to Egypt with their names.” Even during exile, everything remains whole, with all their virtues and despite all the concealments, and a Jew stands whole and with full strength—both in the point of mesirus nefesh and in his individual service, the service that takes its own particular form in each person, for which his soul descended below on its unique mission. All of this remains intact. And when there are difficulties, it gives him the strength not to fall because of exile. On the contrary, precisely from the great descent into exile comes the true ascent, “an inheritance without bounds.” To this point we can add what is written in the Midrash, a further explanation. The Midrash adds two more things, two interpretations relevant to our subject. The Torah lists the names of the tribes to show the strength of the Jewish people while they were in Egypt: “They did not change their names, their language, or their clothing.” Reuven and Shimon descended; Reuven and Shimon ascended. The same Reuven and Shimon who went down to Egypt came up from it. They did not change their names.

19:03 And this follows from what we have been saying. When Jews in exile know that they have their own names and their own distinct paths, and hold firmly to them, this brings out their strength to stand firm and proud even during exile, and to hold proudly to their names, their language, and their clothing. Reuven and Shimon ascended; Reuven and Shimon descended. The same Reuven and Shimon who went down into exile are the Reuven and Shimon who come out of exile, whole in their names, their language, their clothing, in all their ways and with all our strengths. As the Rebbe once said in a sicha, after the difficult years [unclear] in Russia, that we should remain whole in everything that is ours, in our essence and in its outward expression. And here the Midrash adds a third explanation: “They are named for the Geulah of the Jewish people.” As the Rebbe discussed in 5752, on Shabbos Parshas Shemos, he emphasized this Midrash. The Midrash says that the names of the tribes mentioned by the Torah are “named for the Geulah of the Jewish people.” In other words, Reuven and Shimon—each name has a meaning connected with Geulah. The Midrash explains how Reuven points to Geulah and how Shimon points to Geulah. Each name is connected to a particular aspect of Geulah, a particular aspect of consolation. That is what it means by “named for their Geulah.” The Jewish people had only just entered Egypt—“who came to Egypt”—and already the Midrash says that their names refer to the Geulah. This means that a Jew is, in essence, above exile. The moment he enters

20:31 As for exile, we already know that a Jew has no real connection to it. A Jew is, in essence, above exile, because the Jewish soul never went into exile. As the well-known saying of the Rebbe Rashab goes, our souls did not go into exile. They remain in the body, and even the body, when it is connected to the soul, stands above the measures and limitations of exile. This is the strength a Jew has, “in the name of the redemption of the Jewish people.” And this is what today’s order teaches us: to know that each of us is precious, body and soul. A Jew, both in body and in soul, is always connected to Moshe Rabbeinu, always connected to the Patriarchs, always connected to the redemption of the Jewish people. This gives a Jew the strength to fulfill “all the days of your life—to bring about the days of Moshiach”: even while in exile, to live above the measures and limitations of exile. First and foremost, above the inner exile, and also above physical exile, and to reach the true and complete Geulah immediately, through Moshiach Tzidkeinu.