Q:
How is it that Jews have the gentile name Alexander?
A:
Good question. How did it happen that the name Alexander is used by the Jewish people? And other gentile names too.
Now, Alexander, that’s an easier name to answer, to explain. Alexander the Great, when he came to Eretz Yisroel as a conqueror, he sent a message to the kohen gadol and he said “You must give me money and provisions to help me fight against the king of Persia.”
And the kohen gadol said “I cannot. Because we are loyal, we owe our allegiance to the king of Persia.” They were still under Persian rule then.
So Alexander said “All right. When I come back from conquering I’ll take care of you.”
So Alexander went and conquered Persia. That’s when Persia fell and the Jews passed from under the reign of the Persians to the reign of the Greeks.
On the way back, Alexander stopped in at Samaria and our ‘good’ friends called the ‘Good Samaritans’ came to visit him. And they said to him, “We’re not really Jews.”
They always did that. When they wanted a privilege from the Jews they said “We are Jews” but when they wanted to kowtow to the gentiles, they said, “We’re not Jews and the Jews are your real enemies and you should destroy them.” So Alexander took them along and he marched against Yerushalayim.
And then Shimon Hatzaddik who was the grandson of the kohen gadol, of Yaduah the Kohen Gadol, came out with a procession of kohanim to greet Alexander. And as soon as Alexander saw him, he went off of his horse and he fell on the ground to his face and he worshiped Shimon Hatzaddik. He bowed down to him.
And the Greeks said “To this Jew you, Alexander the Great, should bow down to the ground?!”
And he said “Yes,” he said. “That face – it was a beautiful face. Shimon Hatzaddik had a beautiful face; his face was like the sunrise. Alexander said “This face I see before me when I go into battle. When I go into battle, this face goes ahead of me into battle.” He used to have a vision and he saw Shimon Hatzaddik’s face. That’s the story that our Sages tell us. It’s well known.
Now when Alexander met Shimon Hatzaddik, Shimon Hatzaddik asked Alexander for privileges, for certain privileges to keep the Torah worship intact. And Alexander the Great guaranteed the freedom of the Jewish religion and gave him certain privileges. At that time Alexander became very popular among the Jewish people and children were named in his honor. He was considered for us at that time a melech shel chessed.
Now, he wasn’t a low character. I don’t mean now in morals but he was a generous man. And he was now at the peak of his success and it so happened that the Jewish people had reason to like him and therefore that’s how the story goes that many of them named their children for him.
But there’s another question that’s more difficult to answer, and this should knock us over. There were children who were named Titus! Now, that’s a problem! Titus Harasha made the churban Beis Hamikdash. They even say his name Titus in the Yerushalmi. A Jew has his name in the Yerushalmi! That’s a name that we have to answer.
And the answer is as follows. Among the Jews there were many geirim; many people in those days from the Near East fell in love with Judaism. The Empress Poppaea, that’s the wife of Nero, practiced Judaism in her palace. The wife of Nero practiced Judaism! It is well known. That’s what the historians say. She was addicted to Judaism.
In Damascus alone there were 10,000 Syrian women, gentiles, who considered themselves Jews. They weren’t all converted but Judaism was very popular in those days. And so when these people became geirim, their names weren’t changed. In those days they didn’t change the names of geirim like we do today. The converted Jews didn’t take the name of Avraham or Sarah. They brought along their gentile names, and that’s how you have a lot of gentile names. Because these tzaddikim who became geirim when they died so children were named after them. Not after Titus Harasha; the name was given after this Titus who had been a ger tzedek. And that’s how the foreign names were introduced among us.
TAPE #150 (December 1976)
