The opening of the weekly portion tells the story of the pagan priest Jethro who chooses to come to the wilderness to spend time with the fledgling Jewish nation.
“Jethro, the priest of Midian, the father-in-law of Moses, heard of all that G-d did for Moses and His people Israel; that G-d had taken Israel out of Egypt.” He took his daughter and two grandchildren and traveled to the wilderness to Moses and the new Jewish nation.
The Talmud asks this question: What did Jethro hear which inspired him to come to the Sinai desert?
The Grandeur of Torah
“Rabbi Elazar Hamudaei says, he heard of the giving of the Torah, and he came.” Rabbi Elazar Hamudei’s point of view is that what enthralled Jethro about the Jewish story was that G-d loved them, and He gave them His Torah. When Jethro heard of the powerful institutions of Judaism—its obsession with education, charity, justice, compassion, loving the stranger, respecting the slave, feeding the poor, honoring the old, giving dignity to the sick and the mentally challenged; when Jethro learned of the mitzvos of the Torah –Shabbos, mikvah, kashrus, tefillin, prayer, study; when he discovered the ethical foundations of Judaism – that no one is above the law, that each person was created in G-d’s image and has infinite dignity, that history has a purpose, and that each of us was conceived in love to fulfill a mission—when the Midianite chief pagan priest learned of all this, he fell in love with Torah and joined the People of the Book.
Now, 3,300 years later, we often take for granted the contribution of the Torah to civilization. But Jethro did not. He understood what the Irish Tomas Cahill would articulate in his book The Gifts of the Jews:
“We can hardly get up in the morning or cross the street without being Jewish ... The religion of the Hebrews—a tiny, marginal desert tribe—changed the worldview of Western civilization ... The West's most deeply held beliefs about life, human nature, God, and justice are all owed to the ancient Israelites.
“In the ancient world of the ‘ever-turning Wheel,’ the countless gods and goddesses of the old mythologies played out their dramas in the world above. These gods were lustful, jealous, and greedy, and humans were of little import. Man had no freedom to choose a destiny, and no divinely inspired laws and ethics to guide him.” According to Cahill, the Hebrews "developed a whole new way of experiencing reality... It may be said with some justice that theirs is the only new idea that human beings have ever had."
Many Jews I know would be uncomfortable with these words written by an Irish gentile. We take for granted the quality of life shaped by Torah values and rituals over millennia. Shabbos creates happier homes; mikvah inspires more stable and meaningful marriages; Torah education creates more balanced teenagers, less drugs, and fewer suicides. The emphasis on tradition and history diminishes the generational gap between parents and children. The laws of Jewish burial, sitting shivah, and saying kaddish are deeply comforting during times of loss. The sense of community helps people in times of crisis. All of these concepts were new and novel ideas and Jethro, a brilliant man of ideas, understood the majestic grandeur of Torah. This is what inspired him to link his destiny to the Nation of Torah.
Jethro understood that to experience this immortality he must leave his mansion in Midian and join the nomads in the desert. To become part of a story that transcends nature, you must transcend your own nature and actively join the symphony of eternity.
Jethro was not Jewish. Yet he made an awesome sacrifice in order to join the Jewish people and internalize Torah. We were given this gift by birth. Will we not leave our comfort zones to embrace it, celebrate it, study it, and make it part of our lives?
Why Did Jethro Come?
Rabbi YY Jacobson
