For Josephine Luna, as We Welcome You Into the Covenant.

Josie, someday, God willing, you will be called to the Torah by your Hebrew name, Yosefa Yareach.
I have the honor of telling you about your name.

Your birth parsha, the Torah portion Beshalach, is teaming with drama. 

Having lived through the plagues in Egypt, through darkness and death, and been brought to the edge of the sea . . . on the other side of which was nothing but wilderness . . . our people - ours . . . yours, little Yosefa . . . our people faced a daunting task. What they knew was that somehow they had to cross this sea. What they would come to understand was that they would also have to figure out how to be a nation. But they weren’t alone. In Exodus 13:21 we read that Adonai went with them in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night to guide and give them light. I am going to come back to this verse in a minute. Can you hold onto this idea for us? Can you remember that God went with them in pillars of cloud and fire? 

That’ll be a big help. Thank you!

I know I don’t have to tell you that we got across that sea. In the face of all that wilderness, Miriam led us in singing and dancing together when we reached the other side - what better could we have done than express our gratitude and our hope?

This week’s parsha, your naming Torah portion, is Yitro. It’s named after Moses’s father-in-law, one of the most venerated people in the Torah. Yitro, of course, was not Jewish, he was not an Israelite, he was never enslaved in Egypt, and he didn’t cross the sea with us. He sure did love his daughter Zipporah’s husband Moses, though. We know because we can see it in their faces when Moses and Yitro meet up again in the story this week. We can hear it in how they ask after one another’s well-being. We can feel it when they hug. Maybe you remember, Yitro advises Moses in how to set up the governance of this newly formed nation, and Moses follows his advice. The strength of the foundation of our nation comes from the wisdom of many ancestors and many traditions. Just like you. 

For a lot of the story, Yitro and Moses, Zipporah, and their children will live far apart from one another. We can really feel how hard that must have been for them because just as they say farewell we read in the text of the new moon. That brings me to the second part of your name, which I am going to tell you about first.

Josephine Luna . . . Yosefa Yareach . . . “yareach” means moon.

When the new moon arrives, the sky is dark. That familiar luminary that we can all look up and see and share no matter where in the world we live, that we have been looking up and seeing for millenia, that has illuminated so many nights and guided us - it’s not visible. Not yet.

Night after night, the light of the moon increases.
Night after night, we watch and the moon becomes brighter.
And whether here or across the sea, we can look up and see it.

Okay, my little friend, remember that verse from before? The one about the pillars of cloud and fire? Often we read this verse and focus on the most obvious words: God. Pillars. Cloud. Fire. “Adonai (God) went with them in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night to guide and give them light.” 

I want to invite you to get a little closer to that verse. Who did God go with? Who was guided by a pillar of cloud? Whose way was lit by a pillar of fire?

God went with them. 

And who is them?

It’s time for me to tell you more about your first name: Yosefa.

Once upon a time, there was an ancestor of ours named Yosef - Joseph. His birth so increased his family’s joy that’s how he got his name, which means God increases, or just increase. Because of Joseph, the potential, the possibilities, got . . . bigger. There is so much to learn about him, but for today, we are going to just learn this: without Joseph there would have been no hope for our people.

Just before that verse about the pillars of cloud and fire, the people do a rather strange thing, they gather up the bones of our great, great, so many greats grandpa Joseph to bring out of Egypt with them. 

And when our verse tells us that they were guided by cloud and their path was lit by fire, it means all of them and it means Joseph, too. It also means all of us. Judaism is all kinds of time-travely like that. 

We are taught that a new person comes into the world in the very moment the world could not possibly have continued to exist without them. This past year, one could say it’s been a little hard to see the moon, so-to-speak. One could say we’ve been doing our best here between an often overwhelming sea and a vast wilderness. Sometimes we’ve been able to follow Miriam with our timbrels and dance in gratitude and hope, but often . . . we just couldn’t. 

You, Josephine Luna, Yosefa Yareach . . . You arrived in the very moment our world could not possibly have continued to exist without you. With you our joy increases. With you we can see the light that guides us in the darkest sky. 

Josephine Luna, may your parents and grandparents and family and loved ones raise you in joy and love, and may you be known among our people as Yosefa Yareach.

Ken yehi ratzon.

It’s such an honor to be invited to name the babies of my former students who I knew as children themselves, and whose weddings I also officiated. Mazel Tov, Heather and Oliver! I’m so glad you are parents. Much love.