Making sense of the sedra: Shemot
The power of names in an age of power
The Book of Exodus begins not with oppression, nor with miracles, but with names. “These are the names of the children of Israel who came to Egypt.”
It is an unexpected opening. We know what is about to happen. Slavery, suffering, and cries that will pierce the heavens. Yet before any of this, the Torah insists on one simple truth: a people begins with individuals, and individuals begin with names.
This is no coincidence. Tyranny always starts by erasing names. Pharaoh never refers to the Israelites as people. They are a demographic threat, a problem to be solved. Once human beings are reduced to numbers or labels, cruelty becomes possible, even inevitable. The Torah’s insistence on names is its first protest against dehumanisation.
That protest is carried forward by a remarkable group of individuals, most of them women, who defy Pharaoh at immense personal risk. Shifra and Puah refuse to kill the Hebrew babies. Yocheved hides her child. Miriam watches from afar, ensuring his survival. Batya, Pharaoh’s own daughter, rescues a child she knows to be Hebrew. None of them possess political power. All of them possess moral courage. History is changed not only by those who command armies, but by those who refuse to obey evil.
Moses himself is a study in complexity. He grows up torn between identities: Hebrew by birth, Egyptian by upbringing, Midianite by exile. He is slow of speech and reluctant to lead. Yet when he sees injustice, he cannot remain silent. He intervenes. Leadership in Judaism is not about charisma or certainty. It is about responsibility. Moses becomes a leader not because he seeks power, but because he cannot ignore suffering.
At the heart of the parsha lies one of the most profound moments in the Torah: God reveals his name. “Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh (I will be what I will be).” God defines himself not by essence but by relationship, not by what he is, but by how he will act. It is a declaration that the future is open, that change is possible, and that redemption is not confined to the past.
That message could not be more relevant today. We live in an age of noise, labels, and ideological certainty. People are too often reduced to categories, identities weaponised, and moral nuance discarded. Parshat Shemot reminds us that faith begins with seeing the individual, that freedom begins with dignity, and that hope begins when people refuse to accept the world as it is.
Redemption does not begin with the splitting of seas. It begins when someone says, quietly but firmly: “This is wrong, and I will not be part of it.”
That is how the story of freedom always begins.
Rabbi Benjy Morgan is at JLE
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