[Avodah] Names of Months

Alexander Seinfeld seinfeld at daasbooks.com
Sun Oct 25 03:20:31 PDT 2020


Not only did Moshe have many names, few people called him ³Moshe² in his
lifetime. (His father called him Avigdor, his mother called him Tovia,
Bnai Yisroel called him Sofer etc.)

But it seems to me that he likely called himself Moshe, and therefore when
Hashem addresses him for the first time (at the Bush), He is teaching us
derech eretz ‹ namely, call a person what they call themselves.

Regarding the months is an interesting question because Chazal use those
names.

You con¹t ask about days of the week (in English) - Rav Hirsch writes in
one of his essays how much it bothers him that people use idolatrous names
for the week days.

On 10/23/20, 5:04 PM, "avodah-bounces at lists.aishdas.org on behalf of
avodah-request at lists.aishdas.org" <avodah-bounces at lists.aishdas.org on
behalf of avodah-request at lists.aishdas.org> wrote:

>Date: Tue, 20 Oct 2020 21:46:35 -0500
>From: Brent Kaufman <cbkaufman at gmail.com>
>To: Micha Berger <micha at aishdas.org>
>Cc: The Avodah Torah Discussion Group <avodah at lists.aishdas.org>
>Subject: [Avodah] Names of Months
>Message-ID:
>	<CAJDWUYuECD+vT7KdrEd29+vM6LV-EZg2SCQvuA7PCfM1pnOVaA at mail.gmail.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
>Now that the ancient pantheons of gods have been brought up, can anyone
>give an explanation for why the we name our months after Babylonian gods?
>
>Why does Megilas Esther change the Hebrew names of the 2 heroes of the
>story to those of Babylonian gods? (marduch and ishtar) And why did the
>Torah choose, for our greatest Navi and teacher, an Egyptian name shared
>by
>Paro himself- Ra Musa or Ra mes; the noun ?ms? meaning born, the first
>syllable being the name of their sun god, or born of ra.
>I mean, Moshe Rabbeinu had ten fine Yidishe names, yet HKBH wants him to
>be
>known through his Egyptian name. Why?
>The Torah has taught us to be a very insular people, using the names of
>avodos zaros is even prohibited by Halacha.
>
>While I understand that these things bring tikunim to certain aspects of
>the world, I am asking on a more pshat level.
>
>




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