The Parasha is called after Yisro, who seemingly appears out of nowhere to reconstitute Moshe Rabenu’s family and to join the Jewish people. His appearance introduces a universal element to Yetzias Mitzrayim, for he didn’t come any earlier.
But I’m also interested in what Rashi highlights: Why did he come? Specifically, when the verse says that Yisro “heard,” what exactly does it refer to that he heard? Apparently, what the verse has called his motivation, the totality of the Exodus, has not told us enough.
By emphasizing what it is he “heard,” Rashi is putting the focus more on the verb and less on the man. In fact, it can’t be a coincidence that there are two instances of “hearing” in the Parasha that includes the giving of the Torah. There is whatever Yisro hears and then there is Moshe Rabenu “hearing” when he follows Yisro’s advice about how to set up the court system. Both of them precede the scene of the giving of the Torah and they underscore the place of “hearing” as a prerequisite of learning Torah. I intend to get specific about what Yisro heard in Beit Midrash this Tuesday, but there are a few points to make here.
I once heard from a Chacham why hearing, more than seeing, is associated with learning. The eye can take in many things at once. It is not necessarily comprehending them but it can see them. When one hears many things at once, one hears nothing. It comes as a cacophony and the mind shuts off. It is also true that one can ignore what one hears even if it is a single voice. The holes on either side of the head make it easy for things to flow in and then out. But hearing makes it possible to speak of comprehension in a way that seeing does not.
When the Targum translates the verb “Sh’ma” in the Torah, it uses three different meanings. It can be “hearing” in the basic sense. It can also be “understanding.” And it can be “accepting,” as in ready to transform something into action. Only the ear can be involved in taking something at all of those levels -- heard, comprehended, accepted and acted upon.
This is what these stories come to emphasize before the Torah is given. The Torah cannot be given until one is ready to hear at this level. It will never be just information or just stories. It is about affecting a change in action, and that will only happen with a hearing that leads to comprehension and then an acceptance that leads to action.
But the name of the Parasha after the man and the verb that Rashi focuses on tell us that it is really a combination of the two. The Torah cares about Yisro and it cares about what motivates him to come.
It’s hard to figure out who Yisro resembles. He’s something like a comparative religion professor with vast experience in the field, or a bohemian on a quest to find the true G-d. Either way, Chazal say that he left no idol worship untried. What impressed him about Hashem was what the verse refers to as the reaction “to what Egypt schemed to do” (18:11) In other words, the Egyptians had wanted to drown the Jews in water and Hashem drowned them instead. This is Mida K’Neged Mida, punishment that works measure for measure. It is not just an approach to justice but a theological point. Measure for measure can only apply to a deity that controls everything. Every idol has a specific power and all of the tricks associated with that idol flow from that. There is one in charge of fire and another one in charge of water, for example. When they do battle, it’s fire vs. water. That’s not how Hashem operates: He fights back against fire with fire, or water vs. water. That is His way of showing that He is not limited to one power or another. He has all of the tricks, so to speak.
Or one can think of it as Hashem’s only trick, His uniqueness, which is His oneness. He shows this by acting with the attribute the enemy tries to brandish. This is why the irony of the story of Moshe is more than a literary trope. Moshe will come from Paro’s own home, and he will be nursed by his own mother while she is paid by Paro’s treasure. This is Hashem fighting back from precisely Paro’s strength.
This is something that anyone should learn from Yisro, not just those who come from afar. But there is more.
The last point has to do with the two prongs of the Exodus that Rashi points out, the splitting of the Sea and the battle with Amalek. I want to go into the specifics of what that taught Yisro in Beit Midrash on Tuesday night but here I will point out one thing: We learn from these two experiences that there is a preamble to the giving of the Torah. In Yisro's case, two events had to happen, two things had to be learned, before he could come to hear the Torah. Rashi quotes the Midrash’s language: “What “Sh’mua” (hearing) did he hear and come?” Clearly, something has to be heard before someone can receive the Torah. It cannot come out of nowhere.
Over the years, people have asked me what it was that brought me to the Torah. They usually want to know a class, a remark, an event. They want to know if it was dramatic enough to imagine either affecting them or not affecting them. What it was in fact was far more complicated than a simple dramatic moment or event.
But there was something which I have always considered a preamble. When I was in college, I took a two-year series of courses that went through the history, philosophy, literature and religion of the West from Homer to Hitler. Other schools have a one-year version of this but we took more than 10 courses over two years. There was, as you can imagine, a lot of time spent on the ancient world. So when I walked into Yeshiva to check it out, one thing I knew: The ancients were not primitive in their thought or their expression. They were not a step removed from neanderthals nor were they missing much because they did not have advanced technology.
They were well versed in what it meant to be human and they had grappled as deeply as anyone with what it meant to live a good life, to live a proper life. And they knew that life was not worthwhile without grappling with such questions. So I had no bias against the ancients; on the contrary, I thought it made sense to spend time digging more deeply into what the Jews of ancient times had to say. The Parasha is known as the home of the giving of the Torah. But it is really more about what needed to be done before receiving the Torah, an honing of the power to hear and then a preamble that cleared the way.
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