What Jethro Heard

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:

1.     (Jethro heard about) Israel’s encounter with Amalek, just four chapters ago.

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.