Parshat Yitro 5785
This d'var Torah was given on Shabbat Parshat Yitro,
February 15 2025 at Hinenu Baltimore.
Shabbat shalom.
Oh, the Torah's here. That's great.
So this morning we're going to read Parsha Yitro, and we will eventually arrive at the base of the foot of the mountain. Don't touch it. Stand a little far away. This is the instruction.
There is, in the lead up to the revelation, which we come to in this Parsha, Yitro, Moses's father-in-law comes and says, “this system of organizing is not working for you. You are burnt out. You are crispy crunchy. This is ridiculous.”
Also, there's a lot of elders in your community, and you're not asking any of them questions, and they probably know the answer, and they're just watching you stand there, not doing such a great job, and not asking them for any advice.
And so Yitro comes, a Midianite, a non-Jew, comes and says, I'm going to tell you how to organize everything, and it's going to be so much better.
Thanks.
Now, don't flip a few books ahead in which we're told to completely annihilate the Midianites.
Different authorship, maybe?
It's not a good look, because I really love that Yitro is, his name is in this Parsha.
He gives us this whole system of organizing that sets up councils of judges, and then the rabbis come in, and they're like, oh, no, he was Jewish.
We had this whole debate in Torah study about whether or not Yitro converts in this Parsha, because the rabbis like to claim anyone who has a really good idea in the Parsha, they're like, oh, there's like a tiny moment where they converted, like they're Jewish, don't worry about it.
Shifra and Puah, the midwives who save all of the Israelite children who lie to Pharaoh and say, those Israelite women are just really good at giving birth, it happens so fast, we can't catch the babies.
They lie to the government.
Yes, there's a reading that they're Jewish midwives.
We love Jewish women who lie to the government.
This is a good thing that we want to nurture here at Hinenu, but there's a really good understanding that they were Egyptian midwives who wanted to save the babies that they bring into the world.
So I don't really buy the commentary that says otherwise.
Shifra and Puah, in my mind, are allies to Jews.
It means a lot more to me in that way.
And so Yitro comes in.
He's literally a priest of his people, and he shows up and he hears about the miracles that were done for his son-in-law and his daughter and his grandsons and this community that he has witnessed move from enslavement into freedom, and he says, what a miracle.
How do we thank your God?
Like, how does your God like to be thanked?
Oh, sacrifices?
Great.
Show me how to do it.
And so Yitro is brought through the practices of his son-in-law and their people and brings an offering to honor them.
Now the rabbis are like, that's the moment of conversion.
I hate that.
Why would we lose an opportunity to see represented non-Jews loving Jews and sitting in our places of ritual with celebration for our safety and our liberation?
I don't want to erase that from our text.
And I don't want to forget, actually, the fact that later on we're then told to see the Midianites as enemies, because that's really uncomfortable.
It's really uncomfortable, all the populations of people that the characters from our ancestry interact with throughout the books of Genesis and Exodus as allies.
They buy land from so that we can bury our dead, and their babies are saved by their midwives and their system of elders and government is set up.
And then later on, we're told to see those peoples as enemies because they have something that we want.
It's okay for it to be painful.
We don't have to look away from it.
And we actually have to honor the fact that Yitro shows up long before we get that dictum from text to take the land from Midianites and to see them as an enemy.
Because we brought offerings with them, with their high priest, and he helped out our leader, who led like no one would ever lead in all of Yisra'el for all of eternity.
He couldn't figure it out, but Yitro could.
So we remember this part of Yitro, so that when we get to the instruction later, the instruction to annihilate another people who we have once been in peaceful family with, we are that much more uncomfortable with the injunction.
And we trip over it.
And we say, how do we do it differently in a different generation?
Yes, this is a drasha about Palestinian solidarity.
For anyone who is wondering, and they're like, oh, is she going to like avoid, no, of course, this is to say to live in community with our non-Jewish family, right?
Like we're celebrating a multi-faith family in this Jewish simcha today.
We're not going to pretend that that's not a strength of our community, and we're not going to pretend that Jews living alongside Palestinians, Jews living alongside Arabs making family and offering protection is one inheritance that we can come back to.
There are other ways we can write the story, and it is such a blessing that we get to honor the next generation of Jews who are going to write the next version of the story.
DJ, the Torah that you are inheriting, it needs you.
It's been waiting for exactly you to open it up, to help us find the places we've tripped over to, if we're going to really abuse this metaphor, to make a bridge over the thing that we would trip over, but to help us find medicine in the places that otherwise could be used as a weapon.
And I'm so grateful we get to celebrate the fullness of your family without pretending that you have a different makeup of your family.
And without pretending that we are not celebrating a bar mitzvah in a time of war, because we need you to become a bar mitzvah now, to open this Torah up for us.
It is as urgent as it could possibly be.
So with Yitro at our back, giving us advice that we can't come up with on our own, we're going to open up this Torah, we're going to read seven aliyot, and we'll have an opportunity for many smachot, many joyful things to celebrate. you