Parashat Yitro

Parashat Yitro
Shevat 22, 5773 ~ February 2, 2013
by Danielle Elkins

          Three years ago while studying Parshat Yitro in Rabbi Davies Torah class,  a certain possuk caught my undivided attention.   The possuk demanded of me further exploration, so that is what I did.  As I read Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch’s ideas on this possuk, it was as if the truth pierced through my body.  These words validated my thoughts and beliefs in so many ways.  The possuk of that year started my thirst for constantly seeking those moments of brilliance that can be found in studying Torah. 

          For the past year, I have pondered the following possuk from Yitro,  “Moses sent off his father-in-law, and he went to his land (or even home)” (18:27).  Why would Moshe send his father-in-law away, and why would Yitro not argue, leaving us always wondering did Yitro go home? Did Yitro enter Eretz Israel with the rest of the Hebrew nation or did he stay in his land?  Was Moshe upset with Yitro?  Was Yitro not completely dedicated to the Jewish people?  These questions being open ended make us question Yitro’s loyalty and even his heart.  It is very unsettling to me.  So for the past year, I have contemplated and researched in order to find some understanding.  Here is what I found.

          Yitro seems to have the kind of moment I described above when I was reading the parsha three years ago, but at a more magnificent level which we cannot comprehend.   “Yitro rejoiced over all the good that Hashem had done for Israel,...” (18:9) The translation we are given is rejoice, but the Hebrew word is really very mysterious.  There is a totally different word in Hebrew for rejoice.  This word is only used once in the whole Torah and even the letters only correspond once elsewhere which is in the book of Job.  “If the earth is upon me than you will yell out and the mounds together will cry out.”  “Together” is the translation of this word with similar letters.  Artscroll points out the word comes from Aramaic “alluding to the word prickles.”   In short, the word rejoice doesn’t seem to fully describe the meaning.   Prickles is sharp, and when the Truth hits you it can be sharp.  It cuts straight to your core.  Yitro’s life journey to this moment seems to all come together.  Hashem is the one and only.  He believed, searched, and even acted on this belief his whole life, but now in this moment he knows it.  Belief and logic are united.  Yitro’s experience is so unique the word used to describe his feeling is never used again in all of Tanakh.  Interestingly, Rabbi Leubitz found a similar root in the Sheva Brakot blessing which is said at the end of a meal celebrating a wedding, a union. 

          With this idea in mind and our knowledge of Moshe it makes no sense why Moshe would send Yitro away.  Yitro is home.   Moshe says such harsh words to Yitro suddenly after a long chain of positive events.  How could Moshe say it and why would Yitro leave?  It is not consistent with what we know of the character of either, or the story leading up to this possuk.

          Going back twenty-seven psukim to the beginning of the Parsha,  Yitro is described bringing Moshe his family.  Moshe responds:  “Moses went out to meet his father-in-law, and he prostrated himself and kissed him, and each inquired about the other’s well-being;”  They go in a tent together where Moshe describes everything that “Hashem had done to Egypt for Israel’s sake..”(18:8) and then “Yitro rejoiced”(18:9).  Yitro then makes an offering for G-d, and then Yitro eats bread with Aaron, the elders of Israel before G-d.  Only then do we see how Yitro helped Moshe establish a system of judges and leaders.  By establishing this “...then you will be able to endure, and this entire people, as well, shall arrive at its destination in peace.”  All these positive events and interactions, and then Moses is going to just send Yitro away.  Yitro just helped us become a lasting people who will arrive at our destination in peace, so he should be sent away? 

          In going back through the text the greatest clue that seemed almost brainwashing was Yitro constantly being referred to as the father-in-law of Moshe.  Yitro is only mentioned without father-in-law in possuk 9 and 10 which is where Yitro rejoices and praises Hashem.  This is extremely interesting with the knowledge that Yitro is never referred to without father-in-law anywhere else in the Parsha.  I wonder in the whole Torah?   In possuk 9 and 10,  Yitro stands alone with his personal connection with Hashem.  The phrase father-in-law is used thirteen times.   We get it.  Yitro is Moshe’s father-in-law, but do we really understand.  Yitro and Moshe have a relationship.  The redundancy of the word is begging us to really acknowledge their deep connection. 

          It is amazing the similarities of the paths of these two men.   Both men grew up in   pagan, non-Jewish environments.   Unlike the rest of the Israelites, they had never been slaves.  These men were wealthy, and both gave up their wealth and status to be with their people.  We could stop right there and realize what it must have been like for these two men to finally have discussions with someone who had a comparable breadth of knowledge, experiences, and viewpoints.   Moshe and Yitro had a greater probability of meeting in Egypt than both finding the same Truth in the Wilderness.  Moshe and Yitro are always “other” within the communities they live.  Rabbi Jonathan Sacks describes Moshe’s otherness in Exodus: The Book of Redemption. Both men even had to flee their past worlds for fear for their lives.  Moshe when he killed the slave master, and Yitro, an advisor to Pharaoh, when Pharaoh started to create a plan to get rid of the Jews as is stated by the Midrash.  They both find sanctuary for a time together in Midian before the Exodus.  Interestingly, both Yitro and Moshe have many names.  They share a common name, Chever, which means friend.

          All this does not help me understand why Moshe would “send” Yitro home.  I must not fully understand the meaning of the word send, vayishlach in Hebrew. In the context of the story it must mean something positive. There are opinions that it didn’t happen right at this time, but the point is we are given this possuk at this point.   It has meaning in the order in which it is received.  Rabbi Davies looked up on his computer every time Vayishlach appears in the Torah.  It appears 32 times.  We discovered in all cases, Vayishlach takes the meaning of either messenger, gifting, and even salvation.   Here are two of the psukim. 

“Then he sent out the dove from him to see whether the waters had subsided from the face of the ground.” (8:8)

“So Pharaoh sent and summoned Joseph, and they rushed him from the dungeon.” (41:14)

          Rashi and Sforno believe Yitro went to convert his family.  In my opinion Yitro went to his land because that was his task.  Yitro would not argue with Moshe.  If Yitro was needed to go back to his land, then that is what he would do for the good of the Jewish people.  Yitro heeded Moshe’s words, just as “Moshe heeded the voice of his father-in-law, and did everything that he said.”(18:24)  This happens just prior when Yitro explains how to set up a system of judges.  Moshe is saying not as an abrupt ‘leave,’ but as an urgent ‘Yitro go to your land and do what you were meant to do on this earth.’  Yitro would not respond with words, but with action.

          In the past, I did not like the idea of Yitro not entering the land of Israel with his people, the Jews.  Now, it makes more sense to me that like Moshe, Yitro did not enter Eretz Israel.  Their lives paralleled in the past, and so should their ending with only their descendants entering the land.  Their work was for the benefit of others.

          By taking a deeper look at key words such as “rejoice” and “send”, as well as the repetition of words like father-in-law, it adds more understanding of the events taking place.  With this added knowledge we learn more about the emotions of the people involved and the actual tone in which the words are said.  Now we are not just reading the words, but can actually see and hear this beautiful interaction between Moshe and Yitro.

          In today’s world of Hashem being hidden from us, we often overlook and even ignore the mysterious form of the word “rejoice”.  The prickles are there, the truth is felt, but we mostly ignore these moments.  Most have had this feeling at some point in different ways. People are always telling stories of standing at the Kotel, meeting their soulmate, or even finding their home.   I wonder how different our lives would be, if we connected these moments of prickles and connection to the Divine? 

Shabbat Shalom

Parashat Beshalach

Parashat Beshalach ~ Song of the Sea

Shevat 15, 5773 ~ January 26, 2013

by Stephen H. Leist, Librarian to the Stars   

The Jewish bard, Mel Brooks, is asked for a sampling of his written work in the 2000 Year Old Man by his confederate Carl Reiner.  He responds that he was a poet, albeit a long, long time ago.  He continues to recite in the Sand language, which was popular prior to Hebrew and Aramaic: “nag nag makellin be bob, deluch matuch maluch metog.”  Brooks warns that all ‘beauty, gorgeousness, and wonder’ is lost in translation and then proceeds, “beans, beans the musical fruit, the more you eat the more you toot.”  The point he makes regarding the poem’s magic getting lost in translation is elegantly made.  Sadly, the same is true for so many of the Torah’s most enchanting passages and most mystical prayers.

My experience with Song of the Sea speaks to the difficulty of translating biblical Hebrew, particularly passages intended as psalm, and read as music, into another tongue.  Seven years ago on the 30^th anniversary of my Bar Mitzvah, I was called to the scrolls to read this portion.  My encounter with the material was only as song and sound.  Now, as I return to the material, I cannot help but feel that the verse is married to its original language and trope.  Song of the Sea, comfortably situated in what is often called the Cecil B. DeMille, parashas of Beshalach is unique in every way.  Not only does it have its own trope, but it is inked in a special layout, as if to illustrate the two walls of water and the Israelites in the middle.  So central is its sound to the Jewish ear that it is placed in the daily Schacharit prayer service.   Even the ancient PJs (prayer jockeys who preceded DJs) had trouble editing its air time and placed it two times in our calendar, in its current mid-winter home in the correct chronological place, and on the seventh day of Passover.

As music, Song of the Sea is unequaled in the Old Testament but its meaning can be difficult and challenging for the peace-loving.  Rashi refers to the song as championing Hashem’s destructive power and you can see why from the early going: “Master of war”, “glorious with strength…your right hand smashes the enemy.”   Some commentators refer to these as the strength and power stanzas, and it gets a little gory as we hear of horses, chariots and drivers brought under the sea to demise.  It is no wonder that after witnessing the destruction of his army that in the movie version that Yul Brenner (Pharaoh) turns to Anne Baxter (Nefretiri) and states: “his God is God.” According to a rabbinic legend, Hashem confronts a group of angels who are singing this song and in anger he says “my creatures are drowning and you’re singing songs!”   It is only later in the hymn that we encounter the elegant lines: “with your kindness you guided this people that you redeemed: you led with your might to your holy abode.”   

What a moment in time this was for humanity!  Hashem was manifest.  Not only had his plagues rained down on Egypt but in this encounter between a fast-moving, well-armed military force, and the power of the heavens, the lord’s supremacy is clear for all Israel to beholden.   The events of the Sea of Reeds are part of transforming a slave people to a free one.  From the moment Moses sets out from Egypt he is besieged by doubters and those who wished they had just stay home.  The parting of the sea makes it clear that they are in Hashem’s hand and no other.  They are entering a wilderness where they will be sustained entirely by God’s grace: freedom from hunger, freedom thirst and freedom from oppressors.

But what’s up with the rowdy singing?  This was the first communal exultation. Led by Moses and Miriam, they are supported by a chorus of “women of valor” and a cast of thousands who for the first time know with certainty that their age of enslavement is well and truly behind them.  This is the exultation that free people are granted.  They are free to proclaim with joy that an oppression lasting 400 years is broken. They are exuberant and permitted not just to sing quietly in their dwellings, as they may have in Egypt, but to bellow to the heavens.  After all, freedom changes a man and in a few months we will once again be called upon to perform our tableside reenactments so that every one of us can sit as a free man and tell the story as if it were we, ourselves who crossed the Sea of Reeds. 

It is the sages of the Mishraic and Talmudic period who have likened the Song of the Sea to the Ketuba of the Jewish people—our marriage contract with Hashem.  They say that the marriage can be as difficult as the splitting of the Red Sea.  To many, the difficulties of a marriage seem at first to be insurmountable, a miracle if overcome.  In marriage, as at the sea, one must place their trust and faith in Hashem and in this union, and then embark on the brave journey into a new land.

Parashat Vaera

Parashat Vaera
Shevat 1, 5773 ~ January 12, 2013
By Michal Kohane

The lyrics for Louis Armstrong’s famous soul song appear on line with slight variations: “Go down, Moses, Way down in Egypt land, Tell all Pharaohs to Let My People Go!” says one version. The other says: “Tell old Pharaoh, To let My people go!”

Whether the instruction was intended to all Pharaohs, or just the one ol’ Pharaoh, my challenge with this famous and moving song remains: where is the rest of the command? G-d didn’t just so dramatically say, “Let me people go!”, but rather: “let my people go so they can worship Me” (Exodus 7:16). The journey was always connected to a goal. It was not just freedom for freedom’s sake, but for being Hashem’s people.

And yet, it turns out that the song is not the only place where the journey has been separated from its purpose. A careful reading of the text shows that the Children of Israel themselves also couldn’t hear nor comprehend the full message.

Rashi comments on Exodus 6:9  וְלֹא שָׁמְעוּ אֶל-משֶׁה מִקֹּצֶר רוּחַ וּמֵעֲבֹדָה קָשָׁה – “and they couldn’t listen unto Moses because due to impatience of spirit, and cruel bondage”, drawing on the unique term קֹּצֶר רוּחַ – literally, shortness of breath, and says that someone whose breath (“ru’ach”, also spirit, soul) is short, cannot have long breathing. Is that stating the obvious? Rabbi Beni Lau explains Rashi: “This is like a person who is experiencing an asthma attack, and seeks immediate relief. As he reaches for his inhaler, someone tells them about an experimental new drug which might be available someday. The patient’s reaction is likely to be – I’m choking here, and you’re talking to me about something long term in the future? Likewise, the rulers of Egypt are pressuring the Children of Israel, leaving them breathless. Therefore, G-d tells Moses about the various stages of what’s about to happen: והוצאתי... והיצלתי... וגאלתי... ולקחתי...  “and I shall take you out…. And I shall save you…. and I shall redeem you… and I shall take you to me unto a nation” (Exodus 6:6-7), and more.

Why? Why not just get the people out? After all, they are suffering so much and G-d can do anything!

Inspired by my recent watching of “Chatufim”, the Israeli TV show that was bought in the U.S. and became Homeland, I realize the devastating pattern of enslavement even more. Chatufim tells the story of 3 IDF soldiers who are kidnapped and kept in captivity for 17 years. The complex and highly recommended series (available on-line in Hebrew, and can be purchased with translation) has left me with many issues to ponder. One of them is the psychology of the kidnapped. It shows what happens to someone who is kept in isolation, beaten up (physically and emotionally) and at the same time, fed and cared for. Each one of these three components is critical and the combination is a “winning” recipe for creating complete dependence and enslavement of the kidnapped to his captives.

This is the pattern that repeats itself in various abuse situations, from that of POW’s to battered women to the Children of Israel in Egypt (we see it later, when the Children of Israel will moan “remembering the fish, which we were wont to eat in Egypt for nought; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic” Number 11:5). Not everything was bad in Egypt, or else slavery would not have been possible. Too much oppression ultimately begets escape, riots and revolts. It takes the right mixture of isolation (in this case away from their land, from the silent G-d), harsh labor & torture (as in the back breaking work and killing of the baby boys) as well as care (“free food”) to create the ultimate slavery.

We often look at such situations and ask: Why didn’t the person who was in so much pain - just walk out? If Egypt didn’t work anymore, why didn’t Jacob’s children just go home? Why didn’t the Jews leave Europe? Why doesn’t a battered woman walk out on her abuser? Why didn’t the Biblical Joseph go home even once to see his aging father? Why doesn’t our hero in chatufim cross the border, not even a few miles away, even though he has times when he can??

The bottom line is, from where they stand at that moment - they can’t. The successful captivator knows it. The successful redeemer must know it too. The carefully constructed web designed to keep one in, must be carefully undone to ensure a complete and safe journey out. Maybe in this week’s parasha G-d suggests to us that we shouldn’t judge so quickly. Even He takes time when delivering a band of slaves from under oppression and out of their captivity.

Shabbat Shalom.

Michal's writing can also be found on her blog. To continue the conversation, please go to:

http://miko284.wordpress.com

Parashat Shemot

Parashat Shemot

Tevet 23, 5773 ~ January 5, 2013

By Neska

Shemos V2:12   He turned this way and that way and saw that no man was there... 

MOSHE:  A DECISION IN THE SPACE OF A FLASH - Based on a teaching by Rabbi Aron Tendler 

In memory of my Uncle Edwin. 

 

I am confused. 

I am at a choice point. 

The decision I make - right now -  

will determine the route of my life...and of the jewish people. 

 

I am a prince.   I am a Jew. 

I live in the palace.  I was born in the field with my family. 

I am an only son.   I know I have an older sister and an older brother. 

I am loved by my Egyptian mother.   I can feel-I know I am loved by my Jewish family. 

They saved my life - my Egyptian mother saved my life. 

I am a prince of the palace. 

 

Day after day I look out at my people - the Jews and the Egyptians. 

It is a mess.  My Jews are being beaten and destroyed and my fellow countrymen, the Egyptians, are the destroyers. 

 

I know I have been put into the palace as a prince for a reason as yet unknown to me.  But I can feel it in my heart and in my soul that my mother Yocheved nourished in me as a baby. And which Basya, my Egyptian mother, has nourished as I have grown.  She is a gentle woman, a caring woman.  She also loves me very much.  To her I am a true son. 

 

So what do I do now? 

 

Can I really do nothing about this Egyptian who is about to kill a Jewish slave? 

Can I really let this happen? 

 

This is a turning point.  If I let the Jew be killed - I have as much murdered him as the Egyptian. 

 

If I interrupt with this killing, the Egyptian will turn on me.  Will he dare to kill me, the Prince?  Will he dare to report me to the King?  I don't know.  Many people suspect me of being not the Prince, but of being a Jew whom Basya saved from the river. 

 

Somehow I know that my decision right now, right here is a turning point.  If I stop the Egyptian, he will report me.  If I kill the Egyptian it will become known.  Certainly, the slave that I save will go home tonight and tell his family and perhaps many more about what happened to him today...that the Prince saved his life by killing an Egyptian. 

 

I will have to flee.  But then I am away from protecting the Jews as much as I can...look what I did by directing Pharoah to decree - No work on the Seventh Day, Shabbos. 

I cannot wait any longer - this second of time has been stretched to its' fulfillment.  i must act now.

And Moshe slays the Egyptian saying the Ineffable Name. 

And the course of the Jews is changed forever.

Rabbi Tendler suggests that even if we are concerned with a huge goal - such as Moshe's leading the people out of Egypt - we must NOT put aside doing what is correct in the now, even at the cost of changing the way to the goal. To the goal.

When we come to choice points, we may not sacrifice doing what is right – right now...according to Torah standards.  The Rabbis also teach "what is a mitzvah?  A mitzvah is doing some action, some thing that you really do not want to do, but you know it is the CORRECT thing to do.  That is a truer mitzvah. 

When i was in Oakland recently i experienced a choice point.  And even though it nagged at me and nagged at me, i took an incorrect turn.  So having just experienced this, i truly can say, we must NOT put aside that which we know is correct in dealing with others. We'll sleep better at night.

 

Shabbat Shalom.