Mazel Tov! Moshe Rabeinu has his first son
with Tzipporah. Everyone gathers around by the Bris, silently waiting to hear
what he is going to call his firstborn son. Moshe announces: His name shall be
Gershom because I have been a stranger in a strange land.
This scene seems a little uncomfortable.
First, Moshe is saying he's a stranger in a strange land in Midyan: This is the
place where he got married and now lives, why does he still feel like a
stranger? Second, even if he still feels like a stranger in Midyan, he seemed
to have felt like a stranger in Egypt, so what's the significance of being a
stranger now that he shifted over to Midyan? And third, even if Midyan is not
his most desired place to live, why is Moshe focusing on the negative of
feeling like a stranger? Why not focus on the positive of being saved from the
sword of Paraoh? Moshe calls his second son – Eliezer – because Hashem saved
him from the sword of Paraoh (18:4), but the Torah doesn’t even mention
Eliezer’s birth and Moshe only gave this name to his second son. Why is the
Torah so discreet about Eliezer’s birth and why didn’t Moshe primarily focus on
the positive of being saved from Egypt when naming his firstborn son?
There's an amazing Malbim which can help us
answer our questions. The Malbim writes, “Although he lived in Midyan and
married a woman there and although he ran from Egypt because of the slander of
a fellow Jew, even with all this he never lost his love for his people. He had
his eyes and heart set on Egypt, every day, to return there and save them”
(2:22).
This means that every day that Moshe was in
Midyan, no matter how comfortable he got, he still felt like a stranger because
his heart was really in Egypt – to save his fellow Jews. This could be why the
Torah explicitly mentions Gershom’s birth and not Eliezer’s, and why Moshe
named his firstborn Gershom, focusing on the seemingly negative. Moshe’s
primary focus was on the fact that he was a stranger and his longing to return
to Egypt to save his fellow Jews. The fact that he was saved by the sword of
Paraoh was secondary and a means to be a savior for his people.
This is an important idea to think about.
Even if we feel like we are comfortable where we are and with what we have, we
must realize that there are Jews around the world or even in our communities
who are suffering, and we must long to help them. Yes, we should celebrate the
good things we have in life, but our priority and focus should ideally be on
the salvation of other Jews who are suffering.
May
we learn from our leaders to place our focus on others before ourselves. As they say, עכ"ל.I just want to add (maybe in a different direction,) that the names Moshe gave seem to be backward? First he should be thankful for being saved from Pharoh and afterward mention his living in other lands? It may be that one must first put their focus on the present; where they are and one can only appreciate the past after that. It is the present and going forward that allows one to have the proper perspective on past events to see where they led to.
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