This week, we read the story of Moses’s meeting with his
father-in-law, Jethro. We’re at one of the most critical junctures in the
Torah—occupying the tiny space (only four chapters in length) between arguably
the two most important events in our people’s story: the exodus from Egypt and
the experience at Sinai.
Our parashah
begins: “Now Jethro … heard all that God had done for Moses.” And the text is
very clear about what exactly it is that Jethro had heard: “… that the Eternal
had brought Israel out from Egypt.”
And yet, despite the Torah text’s own clarity about what it
is that Jethro had heard, the Rabbis, in the Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishmael,
ask: “What did Jethro hear?”
Kind of a ridiculous question, right? I mean, the Torah
says, very plainly: “Jethro heard … that the Eternal had brought Israel out
from Egypt.”
And yet, this is the question that the Mekhilta is asking.
I get the sense that Mekhilta isn’t asking the question it
means to ask. I get the feeling that the real question the Rabbis are asking
isn’t “What did Jethro hear?” but rather “What is this Judaism thing all
about?” Here, at this critical juncture of the Torah—in between the two most
formative events in our people’s story—the Rabbis aren’t really asking for the
obvious answer to an obvious question (“What did Jethro hear?”), but rather are
asking which of the MANY formative events in our people’s story is most
important.
Here are the three answers that the Rabbis offer:
2.
(Jethro heard about) God’s having parted the Sea
of Reeds.
3.
(Jethro heard about) Israel’s experience at Sinai.
(On the surface, the chronology of the Torah seems to say
that at time of Moses’s meeting with Jethro, the Israelites haven’t yet even had the experience at Sinai. Our Sages
debate whether this meeting may have taken place before or after the Sinai revelation.
A topic for another time…)
The real question here is: “What is this Judaism thing all
about?” Is Judaism about our people’s continued encounter with Amalek—our all
too real experience that the world can be a dangerous place, that there are forces
out there that would attack from the rear, preying on the weak and the sick? Is
Judaism about our people’s experience at the Sea of Reeds—that we have a God
who cares about us, who hears the groaning of those who cry out from
oppression, who brings us out of our own personal Egypt? Is Judaism about our
people’s experience at Sinai—that we have a purpose to fulfill in the world, to
seek knowledge and enact justice, to be partners with God in completing the
work of creation? Or maybe this Judaism thing is about something else entirely.
Jethro, in his encounter with Moses—the Torah tells
us—reunited Moses with the rest of his family. Jethro brought with him Moses’s
two sons, Gershom and Eliezer, and Moses’s wife, Tzipporah—three family
members, corresponding to the three things that “Jethro heard.”
Gershom. In Hebrew: ger-sham,
meaning, “I was a stranger there.” Our people’s timeless experience of Amalek
is the experience of having been strangers in a strange land.
Eliezer. In Hebrew: eli-ezer,
meaning, “My God is a helper.” Our people’s experience at the Sea of Reeds was
of encountering our helping God, the God who hears the cry of the oppressed.
Tzipporah, Moses’s wife. The Torah says that when the
Israelites received the Torah at Mount Sinai, they stood tachtit ha-har—which likely should be translated “at the foot of
the mountain.” The midrash has intentionally misread this phrase to mean
“beneath the mountain,” as if to say that God held the mountain over their
heads and said: “Accept this covenant, or else I’ll drop this mountain on your
heads, and here shall be your graves.” A different reading of tachtit ha-har shows that the Israelites
stood “beneath the mountain, as one stands beneath a wedding chuppah.” In this reading, Sinai was the
wedding ceremony between God and Israel—the moment at which they entered into a
sacred relationship, a partnership, a covenant with one another. The
relationship with God into which our people entered at Sinai was like the
relationship between Moses and Tzipporah.
Jethro reunites Moses with his whole family—as if to say that
Judaism isn’t about only one of these three things, but rather, that
Judaism is about the union of these things. Judaism is sometimes about
Amalek, and sometimes about the Sea of Reeds, and sometimes about Sinai, and
sometimes about other things altogether. Our work is to create Judaism that
reflects this multi-vocal experience of the world—to hear all the things that
Jethro heard.