Parashat Yitro: On Yitro and the Torah

Why is the parsha of Mount Sinai – arguably the most important parsha in the Torah -- called “YItro”? Why couldn’t the parshiyyot have been broken up in a way that begins at Mount Sinai, instead of beginning with the story of Yitro’s arrival in the desert and his advice to Moshe? Why is this story about a foreigner the prelude to the 10 commandments?

I have 3 different thoughts on this issue:
1) Perhaps to teach us that Torah does not only happen amidst lightning and thunder, in a clear divine revelation on a mountain. Torah also happens among people – when one person helps another, giving valuable advice about how to proceed, as Yitro did – instructing Moshe to appoint others as judges, not to do it alone. This human advice, given by a non-Israelite, is itself Torah. We should be on the look-out for such truth and wisdom as it comes to us from all different arenas, because that, too, comes from God, as surely as did the commandments on Mount Sinai.

2) Yitro’s message to Moshe was not to do it alone. This message is a perfect prelude to the public giving of the Torah. The Torah was not given to Moshe alone, but to all of us. It is our communal inheritance. As we say, Torah tziva lanu Moshe, Morashah Kehillat Yaakov. Yes, Moshe instructed us concerning the Torah, but it is an inheritance for the entire congregation of Yaakov. This point is also emphasized in the exodus. Pharaoh argues that it should be enough for just the men to go out to the desert to worship their Lord, but Moshe insists – bena’areinu uvezekuneinu nelekh. We will go with our young and our old. Torah is a communal affair. Yitro understands this in a deep way and suggests to Moshe that his institutional organization should reflect this principle of communal ownership of the Torah.

3) Yitro’s attitude toward the good news of the exodus exemplifies the essence of the Torah understanding of relations between people. The Torah says Vayihad Yitro – Yitro experienced hedvah, joy, upon hearing about God’s deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt. He is not an Israelite himself, but he is happy for the good of others; he is what they call in Yiddish a ferginer, someone who knows how to be happy at other people’s good fortunes. The exact inverse of such an attitude is the feeling the last of the 10 commandments warns against – jealousy or covetousness, the feeling that one wishes to take away another person’s good and make it one’s own. In this way, Yitro’s positive exemplification, and the commandments’ negative articulation form a frame around the experience of Sinai, implying that the ability to feel happy for others is at the heart of the Torah. Indeed, that was R. Akiva’s famous assessment – “Love your neighbor as yourself; this is the most essential principle of the Torah.”

These ideas are related to each other: Having the Torah as our communal project, and understanding that many different people, like Yitro, have a contribution to make to it, both help us to move beyond the barrier of the self and see clearly our dependence on and connection with one another so that we do not feel jealous of another’s success, but happy and joyful, since we are all part of the same project. The Torah is the web that connects us, that dissolves for us in a clarifying way the illusion that we are each separate beings with competing agendas. Yitro sees this clearly when Moshe tries to do it alone: “You will wear yourself out, you as well as this nation that is with you.” The nation and Moshe, all are inter-connected. This understanding of deep interdependence is the reality, the ground, upon which the Torah is given.