Two Minute Torah Podcast

Yitro 5768 by Rabbi Marc Boone Fitzerman

The Torah portion called Yitro is a climactic experience. It’s a zone of exceptionalism where opposites are brought together: the mountain and the plain, God and mortal beings, the created world and the One who created it, who now moves eruptively in nature and society to reveal the shattering, transformative word. Everything is in motion, meltingly fluid.

That is also true in the human community of Sinai. Yitro affirms a radical inclusiveness. Moses’ father-in-law, Jethro himself, comes out of obscurity to witness his son-in-law’s triumph. He comes to the wilderness with Tziporah and her sons, the family Moses has abandoned in Midian. We need to reckon with the strangeness of this reunion. Jethro is the Other, a pagan priest, a servant of the gods that so offend the Torah that its authors can barely think of anything else. He represents a world that Israel is called to reject. Yet there is room at Sinai for this unlikely soul. Moses invites him without condition into the covenant community at the base of the mountain.

Here is the Torah at its most porous and welcoming: love seems to trump all other considerations. For all his gifts, his radiant readiness, Moses is broken—a partial man unsuited for the normalcies of home and family. Jethro insists on reconciling husband and wife. He brings his daughter and his grandchildren to the mountain and requires that Moses reclaim his family. But he does so with extraordinary tact and gentleness. There is nothing here of criticism or haranguing.

Instead he praises his son-in-law and the God he serves, challenging Moses to do the right thing. He goes as far as he can without evoking resentment. There is no opportunity for Moses to protest his condition, that he is too burdened already to receive his wife and children. Jethro merely stands before God, expecting goodness from his harried son-in-law. It’s an astonishingly gracious and loving performance. This is moral theater of a very high order.

We leave this portion with the powerful sense that the world of Torah will continually surprise us. Just where we expect to see borders and edges, the text invites us to hold our own arms open wide. It is ready to say yes to an extraordinary soul who has a Torah of his own to teach Moses, our teacher. It knows that there is something in the heart of this Midianite which needs to flow through the bloodstream of the People Israel.