Rabbi Howard Morrison

Welcome to the secular year of 2024. I wish everyone good health and fulfillment this new year. In addition, we all pray for peace and tranquility for Israel and for Jews everywhere.

Ironically, with the new year of 2024, we begin to read the second book of the Torah, Shmot-Exodus. The English name harkens back to a time of slavery and oppression, which would ultimately lead to freedom from tyranny. In a four-thousand-year period, we can connect the evil of Pharaoh and his supporters to that of Hamas, Hezbollah, Jihad, and their supporters.

The Hebrew name of the second book of the Torah, "Shmot," means "Names." in the opening chapters, we are reminded of the names of Jacob and his twelve sons. We are introduced to the midwives who disobeyed Pharaoh's edicts, Shifra and Puah. We welcome the names of Aaron, Miriam, and Moses. as well as their parents, Amram and Yocheved. We come to meet Yitro, Moses' father-in-law, and his daughter Tzipporah, Moses' wife. They will have two sons, Gershom and Eliezer.

"Shmot-Names" teaches us to not only know the names of Biblical ancestors but to also know our heritage through our Jewish names and those of our parents. How many of us know for whom we might have been named? Or, why our parents picked our particular Jewish names?

if "Exodus" underscores how the Jewish people have been deemed by those outside our heritage, "Shmot" underscores our heritage from within, starting with the names we have been given from birth.

Welcome to 2024 and to the second book of the Torah, Shmot-Exodus.

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Howard Morrison