What's in a Name?

Avi Rubenstein bumps into somebody in the street who looks like his old friend Shimon.
"Shimon, you've put on weight, your hair turned gray, it's falling out... you even got a few inches shorter - and your cheeks look so puffed, you walk different, you even sound different - Shimon, what's happened to you?"
"I'm not Shimon" the other gentleman tells him.
"Wow! You even changed your name!"

The Midrash explains that one of the great merits the Jewish people had whilst enslaved in Egypt was that they kept their Hebrew names, their distinctive lifestyle. They did not allow the physical enslavement of the body to affect their spiritual welfare. Not only did the Jewish nation not get weaker, but as we see they progressed higher and higher until the eventual receiving of the Torah at Mount Sinai.

These lessons are no less applicable today. When we find ourselves in situations lacking moral and ethical principles, demoralized and hostile to principles of justice and basic humanity, we look to Jewish sources and Torah for the blueprint for life. Through the preservation of our spiritual independence we can buck the trend and ensure our identity and our spirituality remain intact.
 

Moreover, nowadays we can even be a Shlomo or a Mordechai or a Shoshana or an Avital or whatever at work and nobody will bat an eyelid - in the multi-cultural age we live in, particularly in the US and the UK, we find a greater tolerance toward people being 'different' and there are very few external factors preventing total observance and identifying with Jewish causes.

The Jews were enslaved in Egypt, or Mitzrayim in Hebrew. The literal translation of Mitzrayim means 'boundaries' or 'straits'.  When we talk about going out of Egypt, this translates to a spiritual Avodah - Divine service - consisting of our needing to break out of our [usually self-imposed] boundaries and limitations and to reach our ultimate, serving all of us better.

Shabbat Shalom