Addict Torah: Yitro 2024/5784

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Rabbi Carol Glass, BCC, SD, The Mussar Torah Commentary, p. 109

At the very beginning of the portion, in Exodus 18:3–4, we learn the derivations of the names of Moses’s sons, Gershom and Eliezer. The choice of the names Gershom (meaning “I have been a stranger in a foreign land”) and Eliezer (meaning “My ancestors’ God was my help, delivering me from the sword of Pharoah”) reveals Moses’s ability to accept and embrace his life in its entirety and to derive meaning not only from the grand highpoints but also from the risky challenges. His children’s names reflect an honest appraisal of a life that includes separation, alienation, and danger, as well as spiritual intimacy, significant familial relationships, and gratitude.

Rabbi Shai Held, The Heart of Torah, vol. 1, loc. 3331, Kindle edition

The Torah wants to draw our attention to crucial connections between the two stories—Amalek at war and Jethro at peace. But what is at stake here? Why does the Torah deem it so important to juxtapose Amalek and Jethro? A people that has been brutally oppressed by one nation and then mercilessly attacked by another might well conclude that it has no friends, allies, or well-wishers. Descendants who read about these events might be tempted to conclude similarly. But the Torah wants to preempt this line of reasoning by reminding us that not all non-Jews are Amalek. Not everyone hates the Jews.

Dr. Avivah Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture, p. 248

Although it is narrated before the Israelites’ great encounter with God at Mount Sinai, this episode contains elements that lead the rabbinic sages to place it, historically, after Sinai. There is, for instance, the reference to Moses’ work as “teaching the statutes of God and His laws” (18:16); these, obviously, could only have been administered after the Law was given. Why, then, if it happened after, is the Jethro episode narrated before Sinai?

Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Covenant and Conversation, vol. 2, p. 128

Moses must learn to delegate and share the burden of leadership. Interestingly, the sentence “What you are doing is not good (lo tov)” is one of only two places in the Torah where the phrase “not good” occurs. The other (Genesis 2:18) is “It is not good for man to be alone.” We cannot lead alone; we cannot live alone. That is one of the axioms of biblical anthropology. The Hebrew word for life, ĥayim, is in the plural, as if to signify that life is essentially shared. Dean Inge once defined religion as “what an individual does with his own solitude.” That is not a Jewish view.

Rabbi Shai Held, The Heart of Torah, vol. 1, location 3331

Every religious Jew has probably at least once entertained some version of this thought: “We have received Torah from God. That is not only the most important thing in the world; on some level it is the only thing in the world that really matters. Anything I need to know, I can and should learn from revelation. Everything else is at best an afterthought, and at worst a distraction or an actively dangerous snare. If we have God’s word, we simply don’t need anything else. The right thing to do, the courageous thing to do, is to shut out everything else lest it lead us astray.” Exodus anticipates this religious posture and tries to nip it in the bud. Right before the Israelites stand at Mount Sinai, they are taught a crucial lesson in the administration of justice by a non-Israelite who has no access to Torah.

Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Covenant and Conversation, volume 2, p. 137, 135

Normally we think of a priest in terms of his duties, ministering to God in a holy place. But priests also had certain capacities. The word “hieroglyphics” means “priestly script” – because only the priests could read and write. The English word “clerical” means (a) pertaining to the clergy, ministers of religion, and (b) office staff who type letters and keep records...The connection between [the development of the alphabet] and the development of the faith of Israel is unmistakable, even if we can only speculate about its precise form. As John Man writes: “Both new God and new script worked together to forge a new nation and disseminate an idea that would change the world.”[8] The alphabet created the book that created the people of the book. Was it divine providence that led to this invention becoming available at exactly the right time and place to be used by the Israelites for the holiest of purposes, namely, recording the divine word? Or was it this new development that allowed the Israelites to develop the consciousness – the high levels of abstraction, essential to monotheism, made possible by literacy – that allowed them to decipher the word of the One God?

Rashi on Exodus 19:18,2

(2) הכבשן A FURNACE of lime (i. e. in which lime is burnt and which emits vast quantities of smoke). One might think that the mountain emitted smoke only like such a furnace and not to a greater degree! Scripture therefore states in another passage, (Deuteronomy 4:11) “[And the mountain] burned with fire unto the very midst of the heavens”. Then what reason is there for stating that it smoked only like a furnace? This is said in order to make intelligible to the human ear as much as it can understand: Scripture gives human beings an example (a comparison) which is well-known to them. A similar case is, (Hosea 11:10) “As a lion does He (God) roar”. But who gave the lion power if not He, and yet Scripture compares him only to a lion! But the reason is that we describe Him by comparing Him to His creatures in order to make intelligible to the human ear as much as it can understand. A similar example is: (Ezekiel 43:2) “And His voice was like the sound of many waters”. But who gave the waters a thunderous sound except He, and yet you describe Him by comparing Him to His handiwork — it is to make it intelligible to the human ear (Mekhilta d'Rabbi Yishmael 19:18:2).

Rabbi Shai Held, The Heart of Torah, vol. 1, loc. 3418

All of this points to a more fundamental fact about the Fifth Commandment: The contours of what honor requires in specific situations can be enormously difficult to discern, and fulfilling those obligations can be just as (if not more) difficult. Not surprisingly a talmudic sage teaches that the commandment to honor our parents is the most difficult one to fulfill (PT, Pei’ah 1:1).

Dr. Avivah Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture, p. 268

the people experience the extremes of death and life at each of the Ten Commandments. To hear the voice of God is to suffer the unbearable; to receive the Torah is to return to life, to one’s recognizable self.19 To stand at Sinai is to achieve some equilibrium, some possible standing-ground, where God’s voice may bearably inform the Torah.

Dr. Avivah Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture, p. 263-264, referencing Rashi on Exodus 20:15:5 (see immediately above)

With this powerful midrash, Rashi intimates an intensity of inner motion, an ebb and tide of response to God’s voice. In order to hold their human position, angelic energies must counteract the long shudder that possesses them at each of God’s utterances. It seems clear that it is not the content of the Commandments that so undermines their stability, but the very fact of hearing God’s voice. And although, in the midrashic scenario, they regain their original position, their fear represents an existential reality that is expressed both in the repeated statement: “The people stood at a distance …” (20:18) and in their delegating Moses to act as go-between (20:16).

George Robinson, Essential Torah, p. 368

Is the Revelation at Sinai history? One must reply with a qualified “yes,” adding, with Dr. Schorsch, “It is history as theological preamble.” Whether or not Matan Torah at Sinai has the status of a historical fact, like the assassination of Abraham Lincoln or Caesar crossing the Rubicon, the force of the story of what happened at Sinai has resonated for three millennia.

W.I. Thomas and D.S. Thomas (American Sociologists, 1920s), The Child in America, p. 571-572

If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.

Dr. Avivah Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture, p. 247

The experience of Revelation is attended by conflicting emotions. For the people standing at Sinai at the highest point of their national history, fear vies with love, repulsion with attraction. In the biblical text, they recoil, yield place to Moses. In the midrashic narratives, the tension of desire and terror becomes central and overwhelming. The nature of this tension is the subject of our exploration: Why do the people recoil, resign their prophetic role to Moses? And how is one to relate to such a retreat?