Some people can name their price;
Others can price their names…
We here shall do neither:
Our names are priceless
And our prices shall remain
Nameless
Instead let us talk of names:
Their character, personality
And reason
As any fence can attest, the
Human Being loves to straddle –
That is: man can never resist placing
One foot on the platform while the other
Reaches for the train and if I were an anthropologist
(And who isn’t?) I’d venture to say it’s because we fear
Leaving the static comfort of today for the dynamic
Possibility of tomorrow
But the Torah, which inspires these words, is alive,
Constantly in motion, helping us grow, moving us
Onward, ensuring our present aspiration never becomes
Our future prison
So, as we straddle any chain-link, barbwire or even electric
The words of truth constantly pushes us off and turns us on to
Something more – while a world tries to create a fence, a barrier
Between what is body and what is soul, between what is who we are
And how we express ourselves, the Torah bridges the gap, and with
Every mitzvah, connection, the gap between what we believe and what
We do is full-filled, the barrier greatly dividing the potential of our purity
And the action of our flesh is torn down, recycled and turned into a bridge.
And it begins now, in Egypt, in the land of borders:
And these are the names
Of the Children of Israel
Who were coming to Egypt
Egypt, a place of differences, where
The possibility for disconnect, hate
And anger is very real and the love
And unity most difficult to come by –
You see, in Egypt, when one looks
At his brother he sees a different body
With a different face and a different name;
In Egypt one can very easily be blind to the
Soul which unites us all and binds us together.
These are the names
Souls are never exiled, be it in Egypt
Of then or Egypt of today; souls by
Definition are in constant connect…
It is merely the names, the expressions,
The body with which one relates to another,
That is imprisoned in a state of unawareness
The challenge is for name recognition and name tags,
Knowing our names, how we relate to the outside world,
Is just as divine as our souls, how we relate to the inside
World
And this is the purpose of Egypt in the first place:
Going down into the confines so that we can turn
Them into expansion, the names descending down
Low so that they reflect how they too are really high
Names aren’t who we are;
They merely reflect who we are
And we inspire for the
Two to walk hand in hand:
The soul reflected in the name
The name reflecting the soul
These are the names
Names plural:
Regarding the soul, essence we are one;
Regarding our names, expressions we are plural –
We each express ourselves in our own unique way.
The purpose is to use our names, each our particular
Expressions to convey the unity that is our soul –
When that happens we arise out of Egypt unified
Mind, body and soul
Hey, that’s the name game;
You gonna be a player?
Mendel Jacobson is a writer, poet and journalist living in Brooklyn. His weekly poetry can be seen at jakeyology.blogspot.com
The words of this author reflect his/her own opinions and do not necessarily represent the official position of the Orthodox Union.