Comedian Jim Gaffigan has many great routines. In one he says

Last names can tell you something like if your last name is Cooper that means you probably had an ancestor who made barrels. If your last name is cantor your ancestor was a singer.  My last name Gaffigan- which is “Gaelic for highly anxious,”

What is in a name? In this week’s eponymous Torah portion we learn of Pinchas’ name. There we read:

Pinchas, son of Eleazar son of Aaron the priest, has turned back My wrath from the Israelites by displaying among them his passion for Me, so that I did not wipe out the Israelite people in My passion.  (Numbers 25:11)

It seems unnecessary to tell us that he is the son of Eleazer who is the son of Aaron- We already know that Aaron had 4 sons: Nadav, ,Avihu, Itamar, and Eleazar. Eleazar and his wife, a daughter of Putiel, bore him Pinachas, who would eventually succeed him as High Priest of Israel. So why does it need to recount his lineage here? And if that was not strange enough  we already know that from last week’s parsha. There  we read:

When Pinchas, son of Eleazar son of Aaron the priest, saw this, he left the assembly and, taking a spear in his hand ( Numbers 25:7)

We get it he is a descendent of Aaron. Great Pinchas gets the Cohen aliyah. But why is it so important that he is the son of Aaron.

Rashi pick up on this and quotes the gemara in Sanhedrin. There he says

Pinchas was called  “THE SON OF AARON” — Because the tribes spoke disparagingly of him, saying, “Have you seen this grandson of Puti, so-called because his mother was one of the daughters of Putiel (see Exodus 6:25), and they interpreted as a word play: As Yitro, the father of his mother, according to one rabbinic tradition, fattened – Petem- calves for idolatrous sacrifices (see Exodus 6:25) that Eleazar his father had married a daughter of Putiel who is identified with Jethro; (see Rashi on that verse and Exodus 18:1), and he Pinchas has dared to slay a prince of one of Israel’s tribes-  without a trial.!”, In response, the Torah comes and connects his genealogy with Aaron (Sanhedrin 82b) ( Rashi on Numbers 25:11)

This is if to say- how could someone of idolatrous ancestry act against a leader of Israel.

I have a lot more to say on this topic, but for now I am just happy to have collected another ancient Yo’-mama joke.

Here is a completely off color and brilliant Key and Peele scene on Yo’-Mama Jokes:

In Midrash Tanchuma we learn:

A person is known by three names: the name by which their father and mother call them, the name other people call them, and the one they earn for themselves. The most important name is the one they earn for themselves. (Tanchuma, Vayakhel 1:1)

He got a name Pinchas from his father and mother. Perhaps he was given this extra name of Aaron to counter the name he was called by others ridiculing his mother’s lineage. Or perhaps “Son of Aaron” it was a name he earned, but that is the topic for another time.