Thirty-three names coming home: The tension of redemption
The book of Shemot—Names—carries one of the greatest stories ever told: the exodus from Egypt, the birth of a nation, the giving of the Torah at Sinai. And yet, it is not named for any of these defining moments. Not Exodus, not Revelation, not Freedom. Instead, it is called Shemot—Names.
Why? Why would a story of liberation, miracles, and nationhood begin with something as quiet, as unassuming, as names?
Because names are not quiet. They are not simple. Names carry worlds within them.
Elu shmot bnei Yisrael ha’yordim Mitzrayma—“These are the names of the children of Israel who went down to Egypt.” The Torah begins with this list not as a formality, but as a proclamation: every life matters. Every name is sacred.
Before Israel becomes a nation, before it receives the Torah at Sinai, the Torah insists on something foundational: a nation is not built on abstractions or ideas alone. A nation is built on people. Names remind us that each individual is a reflection of the divine, and no nation can survive if it forgets the infinite worth of every soul.
This week, we read Shemot in synagogue. The story of our people begins here—not with miracles, not with revelation, but with names.
The book of Shemot also tells the story of nationhood. It is about forging a collective identity, a people united by shared destiny. And yet, here lies the tension: the collective and the individual are in constant, uneasy balance.
Pharaoh represents the erasure of individuality. His regime begins not with slavery, but with forgetting. Vayakam melech chadash al Mitzrayim asher lo yada et Yosef—“A new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.” Pharaoh does not “know” Joseph—not because he forgets, but because he refuses to see. To Pharaoh, people are tools, not individuals. Names are irrelevant.
And this erasure spreads. In the opening verses of Shemot, names disappear. We read of a man from the house of Levi who takes a woman from the house of Levi. They have a son, but his name is not spoken. His sister follows him to the river, but she remains unnamed. Even the daughter of Pharaoh, who rescues the child, is not identified. Under Pharaoh’s regime, names are erased. Identity is stripped away. The story unfolds in anonymity, reflecting a world where individuals are reduced to nothingness.
And then, one moment changes everything. Pharaoh’s daughter opens the basket, sees the child, and names him Moses. Rashi tells us that when she opened the basket, she saw the Shekhinah—the divine presence—surrounding him. To name him was to defy Pharaoh’s ideology of erasure. It was to see him, to acknowledge his humanity, to restore his identity.
This is what Shemot teaches us: that names matter because they carry the spark of the divine. To name is to see. To name is to resist erasure. To name is to redeem.
This tension—between the collective and the individual—runs through every page of Shemot. It is not resolved. It is lived.
And it is the tension we live today.
On Sunday, thirty-three hostages will begin to come home. Thirty-three names reclaimed from the shadows, from a world where their humanity was denied. Their return brings both joy and pain—some will return to the embrace of their families, while others will return only in memory, their lives taken in captivity. This moment is one of profound relief and grief, gratitude and loss, as we hold the weight of their absence and their return together.
But their return comes at a cost.
Approximately 1,000 prisoners, names etched in violence, will be set free. Soldiers, including my son, will leave their posts in Gaza, where fires still burn. And Hamas will remain intact, emboldened by this exchange. These are the terms of redemption.
What does it mean to pay such a price for thirty-three names? It means carrying the weight of our nation’s survival on one side of the scale and the infinite worth of each life on the other. It means understanding that the redemption of one cannot be separated from the future of the whole.
This is the paradox of redemption. It is messy. It is painful. It is unfinished. It asks everything of us.
Today, we live in this same tension. We carry the names of the thirty-three hostages, their return a declaration that every name matters. But we also carry the weight of the thousand names released in exchange, knowing what they may unleash.
The tension of redemption
This is the tension of Shemot. It is the tension of redemption. It is the tension of holding both the collective and the individual, refusing to abandon either.
Elu shmot. These are the names.
The book of Shemot does not begin with miracles. It begins with people. It reminds us that the foundation of every story—every nation—is the infinite worth of every name.
And yet, a nation’s story cannot exist without unity, without collective purpose, without the willingness to bear impossible burdens together. The story of Shemot demands that we carry both, no matter how heavy the tension becomes.
Today, as thirty-three names prepare to come home, we hold the story of a nation and the sacredness of each individual.
This is the weight we carry. This is the tension we inhabit. This is the story we live.