One of my favorite moments of the year happens between last week and this week, specifically last week when we read the portion that concluded the Book of Genesis, and this week when we start the Book of Names. The juxtaposition between the modern passage of time in our 21st-century lives and the very ancient passage of time in the Torah creates something surreal, like flipping from Act One to Act Two of an epic Broadway show.
In all of Genesis, we have names and identities for every single person who comes into existence. Naming is literally one of the first things Adam is commanded to do: give names to every creature. The theme of Act One, the Book of Bereishit, centers on the ups and downs of family life. We learn the individual players and their stories in intricate detail. The book ends with everyone personally blessed, including Simeon and Levi, who receive prophecy that harkens back to a mistake they made twenty years earlier. This is intimate, particular storytelling.
Then we return from intermission to Shemot, and the entire tone shifts. We’re reminded about the names of people we already know, but the new characters are largely unnamed. The most significant event in chapter two, the birth of the future Moses, is described with stunning anonymity: “a man from the house of Levi took a daughter of Levi.” No names.
Just tribal markers. The only people who receive names are Shifra and Puah, and according to commentators, we don’t even know if those are their real names. It takes an entire chapter and a half to encounter an authentic new name.
If you’re reading the biblical text for the very first time, this erasure is jarring. What happened to the detailed, name-rich narrative we just left behind?
The shift reveals something profound about what happens when individuality is crushed by the collective. On one level, we are transitioning from individual stories to nationhood, and what builds the fabric of a nation is precisely the individual stories that make it up. Being individual within a structure becomes the foundation for who we will be as a people: the foundation of democracy itself. But the biblical narrative also shows us what oppression does to a people’s story. Pharaoh doesn’t see individual Hebrews; he sees “the people of the children of Israel” as an undifferentiated threat. This is collectivist thinking from the oppressor’s perspective, and tragically, the biblical narrative itself begins to reflect this erasure, showing us what slavery does to a people’s ability to tell their own story.
Perhaps Shifra and Puah retained their names precisely because they feared God more than Pharaoh. They asserted moral agency as individuals against collective pressure, and in doing so, they kept their individuality intact.
This dynamic echoes an earlier moment in Genesis: the Tower of Babel. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks pointed out that when “the whole earth was of one language and one speech,” it sounds beautiful until you realize it means no one was allowed to be different. Unity that crushes diversity isn’t a virtue; it’s oppression. The Torah has already shown us that both extremes fail: too much individualism leads to the chaos and violence of the Flood generation, while collectivism leads to the tyranny of Babel. After these two catastrophic failures, Abraham was called to create something entirely new: a social order that honors both individuality and community, where unity comes not from uniformity but from covenant.
This biblical critique of collectivism has urgent contemporary resonance. In his recent inaugural address, newly elected NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani declared: “We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.” But the Torah shows us that collectivism isn’t warm. It’s the erasure of your name, your story, your moral agency. It’s being reduced to “a man from the house of Levi” instead of a person with a marriage, a child, a destiny. The streets of Pharaoh’s Egypt weren’t warm with collectivist solidarity. They were filled with anonymous slaves building monuments to tyranny.
The rest of Exodus becomes the story of reclaiming individuality. Moses gets his name back. God reveals His Name at the burning bush. At Sinai, each person says “I will do and I will listen,” expressing individual acceptance, not collective compulsion. The biblical model of peoplehood is radically different from both ancient tyranny and modern collectivism. It’s a nation built from individuals in covenant, where each person has a name, a story, and irreducible dignity.
When we lose our names, whether through Pharaoh’s slavery or promises of collectivist warmth, we lose our ability to tell our own story. When we reclaim our names and stand as individuals before God, we become capable of true community. The Torah’s transition from Genesis to Exodus isn’t just ancient history. It’s both a warning and a roadmap.
