וְיֵעָשׂוּ כֻלָּם אֲגֻדָּה אֶחָת לַעֲשׂוֹת רְצוֹנְךָ בְּלֵבָב שָׁלֵם
וְיֵעָשׂוּ כֻלָּם אֲגֻדָּה אֶחָת לַעֲשׂוֹת רְצוֹנְךָ בְּלֵבָב שָׁלֵם
Moses was famously close with his father-in-law, Yitro (Jethro), the Priest of Midian. This week’s Torah portion is named after Yitro, celebrating the reunion between Moses and Yitro shortly after the Exodus from Egypt.
Click HERE for an audio recording of this D’var Torah
A D’var Torah for Parashat Yitro
By Rabbi Greg Schindler (’09)
“She generally gave herself very good advice (although she very seldom followed it)”
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
How good are you at taking advice?
I know that I could use a lot of work in this department, especially when it comes to unsolicited advice. If someone starts a sentence with, “I think you should”, I often nod my head appreciatively… and tune out.
This seems to be a part of human nature. According to research, people generally start out with a personal bias towards their own opinions, and discount the advice of others.
Most of us feel like the Duchess in Alice: “If everybody minded their own business ..the world would go round a deal faster than it does.”
Perhaps to counteract this bias, our tradition is replete with advice about Read More >
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A D’var Torah for Parashat Yitro
By Rabbi Matthew Goldstone
This week the American Jewish community finds itself processing the events of last Shabbat, during which a rabbi and three congregants were taken hostage in Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas. As a minority in the United States, many are reflecting on the dangers of being Jewish in this moment. Our parasha this week mentions the names of Moshe’s sons, the meanings of which echo sentiments some of us may be feeling: Gershom, “I have been a stranger in a foreign land,” and Eliezer, “The God of my father was my help, and God delivered me from the sword of Pharaoh” (Exod. 18:3-4). In some ways, despite having been a presence in North America for hundreds of years, we are still strangers, those who are misunderstood Read More >
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This week’s Torah portion includes the single most intense episode in the whole Torah—the revelation of Torah at Mount Sinai. The Israelites, having left Egypt, stand together at the foot of the mountain. There’s thunder and lightning, and the blaring of a horn. The mountain is shaking and smoking, because God has come down on it in fire. This is when the Israelites really become a people, God’s people—when God gives them the Torah.
We don’t call this Torah portion “revelation,” though. And we don’t call it “the 10 Commandments.” The name we use for this Torah portion is Yitro, because the portion begins with something else, something that is also very important, though more mundane.
At the beginning of parashat Yitro, Moses and the Israelites are encamped at Mount Sinai. Moses’s father-in-law, Jethro—Yitro in Hebrew—comes to visit. Jethro and Moses have a nice visit and catch up on Read More >
A D’var Torah for Parashat Yitro
By Rabbi Matthew Goldstone
At the beginning of this week’s parasha Moses’ father-in-law, Yitro, hears of “all that God had done for Moses and the Israelites” (Exod. 18:1) and he brings Moses’ wife and children to join the Israelites in the desert. Moses goes out to greet Yitro and warmly welcomes him into his tent. Moses then recounts to his father-in-law all of the miraculous deeds that God performed to bring the Israelites out of Egypt and Yitro rejoices (Exod. 18:8-9). But wait. If Yitro already heard about “all that God had done for Moses and the Israelites,” then why does he only rejoice after hearing all of this again from Moses? By this point the exodus is old news! Perhaps the answer lies not in the message but in the messenger. Hearing secondhand, even about miracles such as the splitting of the sea, is simply Read More >
A D’var Torah for Parashat Yitro
by Rabbi Jill Hammer, PhD
As I write this, I am thinking of a particular moment in my life, when I was about to lead a large ceremony. A few years prior at the same ceremony, I’d been dehydrated and nearly passed out while giving a D’var Torah. So I was nervous. Things were running late, which made me even more nervous. As preparations concluded and the moment to begin arrived, I must have looked very anxious indeed. An elder—a wise rabbi who had led many rituals—came over to me and looked me up and down. “You’re going to be fine,” she said. And I was.
I am wondering if Yitro came to Moshe in the wilderness, just before Moshe’s big moment, for that very same reason: to tell him he was going Read More >
by Rabbi Michael Pitkowsky
The highlight of this week’s parashah is the reading of the Ten Commandments. While there are midrashic compilations on individual books of the Bible, the Ten Commandments merited having their own individual midrash, Midrash Aseret ha-Dibrot, the Midrash of the Ten Commandments. This midrash was edited during the Middle Ages and draws upon many sources, both Jewish and non-Jewish. It is not structured like a classical midrash, and Joel Rosenberg wrote that “[it] represents the transition in Jewish literature from interpretation of Scripture to pure fiction, in a more modern sense of the term.”
Below is an edited version of a story included in this midrash about the commandment against adultery, a story that describes the trials and tribulations of a certain Rabbi Meir.
A tale is told of Rabbi Meir, that he used to go up to Jerusalem on each and every festival. And he would stay at the home Read More >
Parashat Yitro: What Makes the Thunder?
I once heard physicist Karen Barad explain how lightning happens. She showed us how charged particles on the ground and oppositely charged particles in the sky find their way to one another, reacting to produce a flash of lightning. The method by which the particles find one another across such a distance cannot be explained completely by contemporary science. Lightning and thunder are still a mystery. So, too, the thunder and lightning in Parashat Yitro present a mystery.
The Torah is given in the wilderness in the context of a supernatural thunderstorm. The thunder on Mount Sinai is one of the most memorable elements of revelation:
On the third day, as dawn broke, there was thunder and lightning, and thick cloud upon the mountain…Now Mount Sinai was entirely smoke, for YHWH had come down upon it in fire. The smoke rose like the smoke of a kiln, and the Read More >
Parashat Yitro
Rabbi Isaac Mann
This week’s Torah portion begins with the story of Yitro, father-in-law of Moses, coming to the Israelite camp along with his daughter Zipporah (Moses’ wife) and her two sons, after hearing about the Exodus from Egypt and G-d’s role in that event. The Torah goes into some detail about the initial encounter that seems rather unusual and even unnecessary — “Moses went out to his father-in-law and bowed down and kissed him, and they greeted each other, and they went into the tent” (Ex. 18:7). One might expect such trivial details in a modern novel, but what purpose does it serve in the Torah with regard to Moses’ and Yitro’s coming together? Would one expect that they did not greet each other warmly? After all, there is no indication of any enmity between the two, as we find, for example, with regard to Jacob and Esau, where the Torah Read More >
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