As I study this parasha I cannot but stop and wonder , what’s on a name. We are so accustomed to today’s regimes to labelling everything we do and see. in our tendency of labelling everything we come up with names such as, old trusty, thumper, swifty just to name a few. even our congregation we like to identify ourselves as Aleph Tav, meaning we are followers of Messiah Yeshua, he was the Aleph and the Tav, encompassing the whole of creation. The reason behind I suppose is that it gives us a certain degree of comfort, as we can then identify ourselves which that surrounding us.
In this parasha HaShem takes particular care to reveal to us, that the new Pharaoh did not know Joseph, I guess history was not his forte. So I stated whats in a name, well, in ancient times the name represented the character of the individual, it described the person as well as his character, it was common also that a person would go through name changes as he lived life and influential events took place in their lives. To this day some of these customs still applies, in Judaism and Catholicism is the case. For example a new pope always undergoes a name change, and at this stage you are probably thinking whats the pope got to do with parasha, everything and nothing, its just an illustration on how ancient customs still remains.
So the new ruler of Egypt did not know or did not wanted to know, what is evident is that he feared the Bnei Yisrael, the children of Israel. The saviour of Egypt no longer relevant, and now his family are being persecuted due to fear. additionally this teaches us that perception of one self can make a big difference on our outcome, and as in this case the overseers over the children of Israel were in most cases Israelites themselves, as it was thecae during the holocaust. Fear drives men to do unspeakable things. Not knowing whom we are causes us to fear, to move our focus from our dependance, HaShem, and into self, our own strength and ego, thus fear creeps in and leads us into the path of destruction of self as the individual, and self as a whole.
In Messiah’s time a similar theme occurred, the leaders of Israel, the Sadducees, and some Pharisees rejected and falsely accused messiah Yeshua, they went as far as instigating and handing over Yeshua to Gentiles for his execution. You they did not know HaShem and had forgotten his name, His character. To the point that the high priest was no longer of the Aaronic blood line, and the status of high priest was bought and sold as a commodity, to the highest bidder.
Two thousand years have elapsed since Yeshua came, gave his life, as atonement for the whole of humanity, ascended to the right hand of the father and we await his return, the question now remains, are we like pharaoh have we forgotten his name, his character. Are we willing to place a burden on His children, to execute his young, enslave his people out fear of our own self inflicted ignorance? These are some of the questions we need to ask ourselves.
