Despite the story of the singularly most momentous occasion in world history being told in this week’s parsha, the Torah starts with a seemingly unimportant (in comparison) story – Yisro and his critique of his son-in-law, Moshe.
Yisro sees Moshe trying to do everything himself and realises that Moshe is risking burnout and short selling the people.
He suggests that Moshe delegate dealings with people – appoint officers to deal with ten people, others to handle fifty, a further level for hundred and yet another level for a thousand people. Moshe would sit at the top and deal with the cases that could not be resolved by lower four levels of judges and mediators.
But anyone who knows Jews, knows that they would not stand for it.
As the joke about Israel goes, everyone is a President, every Jew is special and all would demand that only the top person, only Moshe, could be the person to hear their issues.
Yisro’s solution was that despite their claims of special ‘protectzia’, everyone had to go through the process. They could not bypass a rung. And Moshe couldn’t do the same. He would only handle the challenging issues once they had worked their way through the levels. The whole thing was a system and everyone had to play their part for things to work.
And that indeed is the key prerequisite to Torah observance. There are no ‘special relationships’, no bypassing, no going straight to the top. Torah requires people to follow the correct process.
Yisro’s solution actually is the only way that Torah and mitzvos work for a people.
