Mendel Bluming | Blogger

Lately mass shootings have becoming painfully common. Everyone has an idea but meanwhile the carnage continues unabated in places of worship and places of work etc. Does the Torah give us guidance as to what we need to do to address this? In what must surely be one of the most enigmatic passages of the entire Torah, we read the section of egla arufa. An unidentified corpse is found abandoned in a remote location with no   clues available to help identity the murderer or the victim. The leading Rabbis and sages of the Jewish people gather at the site where the body was found to undergo a public cleansing ritual. As part of the ceremony, the Rabbis formally announce that they are personally innocent of the crime; our hands did not spill this blood, nor did our eyes see this crime (Shoftim 21:7). Almost all the Biblical commentators question the need for such a declaration by the sages. In the words of Rashi: would it enter one’s mind that

The medrash in Leviticus Rabbah 32:5 teaches that the Jewish people were redeemed from Egyptian slavery in the merit of their not changing their names from Jewish names. It is alluring to sound more Egyptian or to sound more secular in order to fit in. Maintaining a Jewish identity inspires a family to maintain Jewish practice. Someone recently asked me my name and when I told him that it is Menachem Mendel Bluming they asked me but what is your real name? Menachem Mendel Bluming I said. They said no I mean the name that the doctor calls you in the office or that they called you in school? I acquiesced. Okay either Menachem Mendel Bluming, Menachem Bluming or Mendel Bluming. They became insistent. Don’t you know Jews who have names like Peter, Paul or Charles? I certainly do I answered, fine Jewish people. But my name is just Menachem Mendel Bluming, that’s it. Do you mind if people call you something different, he asked? I said sure how about Mendel Menachem B