Parshat Yitro: Exuberant Practicality

BY: ARIELLA NEWBERGER

This week’s parsha is named for one of the Torah’s most beloved figures. Though Yitro himself was not an Israelite (rabbinic opinions vary on this), he immediately and jubilantly praised Hashem, the G-d of Israel, above all other gods when he heard of the miracles surrounding the Israelites’ Exodus from Egypt:

And Yitro rejoiced for all the good which G-d had done to Israel; that He had delivered them from the hand of the Egyptians. And Yitro said: ‘Blessed is G-d who has delivered you from the hand of the Egyptians and from the hand of Pharaoh; who has saved the nation from beneath the hand of the Egyptians. Now I know that G-d is greater than all other gods, because of what had been dealt against them.’ [i]

Yitro followed these extolling verses with sacrifices to Hashem, described as olah and zevachim.[ii] These types of offerings are later commanded by the Torah to be given in the Tabernacle and the Temple, thus leading to a rabbinic dispute concerning the timing of this episode – whether it took place before or after receiving the Torah.[iii] No matter the actual chronology of Yitro’s visit, the Torah’s pshat (simple) indication of the timing serves an important literary function.

The passage describing Yitro’s visit to the Israelites’ desert encampment straddles a crucial area of the Exodus narrative and beautifully mirrors the role he played in the lives of those he most closely affected – especially his son-in-law, Moshe. His visit is the bridge between the overwhelming miraculous events that took place in Egypt and at Kri’at Yam Suf ( the splitting of the Red Sea), and their subsequent internalization by the people of Israel through mitzvot given to them at the Ma’amad Har Sinai revelation. Yitro’s personal reaction to Hashem’s miracles directly models the logic of the covenant set between Hashem and the Children of Israel immediately following his visit.

            In splitting the waters of the Red Sea for the Israelites and subsequently drowning their pursuers, Hashem effectively set the terms for the covenant between Himself and Israel which is verbalized in the first commandment just after Yitro’s departure. In a statement rather than a command, Hashem opened: “I am the Lord your G-d, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.”[iv] Through establishing this fact, Hashem laid down the reason to observe all the mitzvot that follow, beginning with the second commandment forbidding any form of worship of other gods: “There will be for you no other gods before Me…”[v]

 

            Nachmanides (Girona and Israel, 1194-1270) states in his glosses on Maimonides’ Sefer Hamitzvot that the numerical value of the word Torah, 611, in addition to the number 2, referring to the first two commandments surrounding belief in G-d, adds up to equal the total numerical value of all the tarya”g mitzvot, 613. It is therefore only through the observance of the 613 mitzvot that one might fully actualize their belief in the Torah and their belief in G-d.[vi] It is interesting to note that Yitro’s natural reaction to hearing of Hashem’s miracles, without even experiencing them himself, led him by joyful choice to the same conclusion of faith in G-d. He never personally required any covenant or commandment to do so. In contrast, the Israelites at this time needed outlined for them the logic of how their salvation leads to an expectation of worship in their covenant with Hashem.

            In another part of his visit, Yitro serves as a logical third party through which complex problems are boiled down to simple truths and concrete solutions. The Torah states that Moshe at this time would ‘sit in judgment’ of B’nei Yisrael. Of B’nei Yisrael it states that they ‘sought Hashem’ from dawn until dusk[vii], seeming to indicate a role of pedagogy on the part of Moshe in addition to that of exacting justice. If one were to presume the pshat timeline were accurate, it is understandable that this scenario would take place before the giving of the Torah; that the people of Israel were overwhelmed by what they witnessed in Egypt and at the Red Sea and wanted to further seek G-d but did not know how. They would therefore come as individuals to Moshe in order to do so. Moshe also frankly does not seem to know at this time how to transmit what he knows of G-d to the people in any practical fashion. 

            Along came Yitro and recognized that this was all too much for one man to do alone. He advised Moshe to set up a system of judges and to empower these layers of entrusted leadership to educate and adjudicate over groups of tens, groups of fifties, groups of hundreds and groups of thousands among the Israelites. Only unresolved cases would come to Moshe himself.[viii] Yitro is thus responsible for setting up a practicable system of pedagogy and justice that served and continues to serve as a model for generations beyond.

            Yitro is a model of both how to process and how to respond practically to overwhelming circumstances. He joyfully internalized Hashem’s miracles as proof that He is God above all others – not quite monotheism, but on the way – thereby giving us a model of a personal choice approach to covenant. He also understood the realistic limits of a single leader and created a systematized approach based on trust, transmission and education. 

May we all seek to emulate Yitro’s enthusiasm, positivity and practicality in our individualized approaches to faith in Hashem, the practice of Judaism and the way we live our lives beyond.

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[i] Exodus 18:9-11. Translations of the verses from Exodus are my own.

[ii] Exodus 18:12.

[iii] Babylonian Talmud, Masekhet Zevachim, 116a.

[iv] Exodus 20:2.

[v] Exodus, 20:3-6.

[vi] Sefer HaMitzvot of the Rambam, Mitzva 207.

[vii] Exodus 18:13-16.

[viii] Exodus 18:17-23.

Parshat Beshalach: Difficult Freedom

BY: JOSH HALPERN 

 Awe-inspired by the drama of the ten plagues, the Jewish people leave Egypt in a euphoric frenzy. Yet, with the Egyptian army in pursuit from the rear and the Sea of Reeds serving as a barrier in the front, the Jews want nothing more than to return to slavery and its guaranteed psychological and material security. Thus, the people call to Moses in desperation: “Was it for want of graves in Egypt that you brought us to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us, taking us out of Egypt? Is this not the very thing we told you in Egypt, saying, ‘Let us be, and we will serve the Egyptians, for it is better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness?’”[1]

Despite painful memories of persecution, the Israelites go “berserk” and long for slavery but ultimately, find salvation in divine intervention. Come Passover, Chazal obligate every Jew to internalize and “re-experience” this perplexing and miraculous narrative. The predicament of the modern Jew when confronted with this expectation is twofold: first, within the narrative itself, the fickleness of Jewish people in their commitment to God seems utterly irrational in light of the endless miracles God performs in Egypt. Second, the perpetually tyrannized, exilic Jew has drawn from a deep basin of shared experience in order to empathize with ancient Israel’s affliction. Yet, to the modern Jew, enjoying the benefits of democracy, the experience of subjugation is a foreign one and a closed chapter in Jewish history. In the eyes of modern man, the war against slavery has long been won! Therefore, I turn to the humanistic (and quasi-existential) psychology of Erich Fromm to breathe fresh life into the Israelite struggle for freedom. 

While under Egyptian rule, the Israelite’s experience never extended beyond the confines of the pyramid he was ordered to construct. As long as the Jewish slave proved healthy enough to work, he found his niche in the stability and consistency of social hierarchy. Sustenance, housing, and employment were all provided and practically predetermined, severely limiting the range of Israelite freedom. In apotheosizing the authoritarian rule and bowing subserviently, the Jew was offered a haven from the “perils of uncertainty.” Thus, the abolition of Israelite slavery threatened the Israelite’s security and self-conception. In an analysis of the breakdown of the medieval hierarchy, Fromm cuts to the crux of the freed slave’s psychic experience:

[Man] is freed from those ties which used to give him security and a feeling of belonging. Life has ceased to be lived in a closed world… the world has become limitless and at the same time threatening. By losing his fixed place in a closed world man loses the answer to the meaning of life; the result is that doubt has befallen him concerning himself and the aim of life.[2]

Rocked in the psychological cradle of slave labor, the Jew was subservient to the Egyptian monarchy. However, via the plagues, God exposes the flimsiness of the Egyptian empire’s social structure thereby undermining the source of Jewish security. In shattering Egyptian authoritarianism, God conveys to the world that they must dispose of the inequalities deriving from social hierarchies.

Yet when confronted with a choice between the uncertainty of ethical freedom and a security lying at the lowest rung of the social ladder, Jewish autonomy disintegrates. Fromm eloquently depicts the tragedy of the desert Jew: “Evil is man’s loss of himself in the tragic attempt to escape the burden of his humanity,” [3] Fearing the multitude of psychological and material challenges inherent in the experience of freedom, Israel commits an act of “evil” in longing for slavery (in their minds a “paradise lost”). Israel’s desire to return to their preexisting hierarchy is a dramatic attempt to regress existentially to a state of “pre-individualism”. In Fromm’s terminology, the regression is labeled as an incestuous symbiosis, where “the symbiotically attached person is a part and parcel of the ‘host’ person. He cannot live without that person, and if the relationship is threatened he feels extremely anxious and frightened.”[4] The fundamental psychological tendency underlying this phenomenon is man’s desire to completely shed his individuality and the responsibility it entails. The “crime” of the enslaved Israelite was that he evaded individuality by lodging his self-definition firmly in the pyramid of an Egyptian hierarchy. 

Liberation from the hierarchy has brought the Israelite to the bank of the Sea of Reeds, and presented him with freedom’s most fundamental challenge – an absolute choice: to take the plunge into the abyss of an unpredictable freedom or to passively submit to Egyptian rule. In the mind of the Israelite, the desert journey symbolizes freedom’s inherent mystery. Fear of the unknown subsumes Israel, and once again God extends “supernatural benefits” to his adolescent people in splitting the sea. 

Further, the splitting of the sea and the Israelites’ passage through it can be interpreted through the prism of Fromm’s thought. In Frommian psychology, incestuous symbiosis finds its purest form in the mother-child relationship. The mother’s relationship to the child during pregnancy, the apex of a mother’s symbiotic attachment to her child, and the raising of the child is defined by the tension between dependency and cultivation of a child’s autonomy. The passage through the Yam Suf symbolizes the beginning of Israel’s “rebirth” and severance of their symbiotic tie to Egypt. The need for God’s undying unilateral grace and the constant complaints and spiritual shortcomings of the wanderers in the desert indicate to the reader that Israel has failed to mature into a free and independent people and undo the imprints of slavery. 

Yet, while the desert wanderers failed to shed their slave mentality, servitude has sensitized the historical Jewish community to the dehumanizing pain underlying subjugation to the other. Fromm’s methodology points to man’s insecurity and fear of change as the psychological foundation upon which the societal hierarchy rests. In an attempt to marginalize human freedom and potential change, the hierarchy predetermines man’s social function. Man begins to view a contingent social construct as an absolute structure upon which man’s very self-definition is reliant. Only after reflecting on the miseries born from the deification of a social convention can the Israelite begin to realize the biblical ideal of freedom and the ambiguities entailed. Rabbi David Hartman offers the modern Jew a penetrating perspective on Exodus and its relevance: “The Exodus and the desert signify that only after the total need for unilateral grace and miracle has been left behind is the community ready to enter the Promised Land and begin to face the responsibility of building a covenantal society.”[5] Throughout the seder, one’s slave mentality must be shed and the covenantal responsibility for mankind internalized. Thus, the individual Jew must free himself from the clutches of dependency and make a choice: will he strengthen his self-conception by embracing the building process of moral development, or will he stifle himself with the security of indifference? 

An afterthought-

The modern Jew can relive the experience of national Exodus in reflecting upon collective Halakhik Judaism as it stands today. One must ask him or herself: does the halakha keep pace with the historical process of freedom and continue to oppose the inequalities within Orthodoxy and beyond it? Or have exile and fear of extinction driven the Orthodox community to stagnate and deify the halakha, losing sight of the ethical telos driving the legal process? In Towards Historic Judaism, Eliezer Berkovitz powerfully asserts the latter: “The rigidity and inflexibility of Judaism, as it has been handed down to us since the conclusion of the Talmud, is not of the essence of Judaism.”[6] While Exodus begins the long and tumultuous ascent toward freedom and equality, it is ultimately contingent upon the Jewish community of today to actively realize halakha’s ethical directive.

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[1] Exodus 14: 11-12 

[2] Fromm, Eric. Escape From Freedom, 80.

[3] Fromm, Eric. The Heart of Man, 148.

[4] Ibid. 104. 

[5] Rabbi David Hartman. The Living Covenant, 272

[6] Eliezer Berkovitz. Towards Historic Judaism, 30.

Parshat Vayeitzei: Between Avinu and Rabbeinu – Contrasts Between Jacob and Moses

BY: Ariel Stein

בראשית פרק כט

וַיִּשָּׂא יַעֲקֹב רַגְלָיו וַיֵּלֶךְ אַרְצָה בְנֵי קֶדֶם:

And Jacob lifted up his feet and went to the land of the easterners. (Genesis 29:1)

With his brother out for blood, Jacob is forced to leave home and strike out on his own. Pausing for the night, he falls into a deep slumber pierced with a vision of an angelic ladder. Now awake and driven by the message given to him by God – that he is to be the father of children as numerous as the dust of the earth (Genesis 28:14) – he rises up to take hold of this destiny. In this week’s parasha, Vayeitzei, we find a Jacob that comes into his own as a patriarch. The creation and continued existence of his family becomes his primary value throughout his life, and Vayeitzei holds most of the examples that display this overwhelming aspect of his character.

Through the use of literary tropes similar to those which Robert Alter has characterized as “type scenes” (The Art of Biblical Narrative 47), we can reveal much about biblical characters. To demonstrate this theme in Jacob, our foil will be Moses, another future leader of the Jewish people, whose primary focus can be seen as justice and compassion for the weak. Both Jacob and Moses encounter similar situations in their lives.

The chart below details some of the common experiences that Jacob and Moses share and some slight differences in how they respond. Differences are identified with an asterisk (*).

	Biblical Story	Jacob	Moses
1	Reason behind fleeing from home:	Archenemy (Esau) wants him dead (Gen. 27:41-45	Archenemy (Pharaoh) wants him dead (Ex. 2:15)
2	First action upon arriving at destination:*	Meets and helps a woman at a well (Gen. 29:10)	Meets and helps women at a well (Ex.2:17)
3	Identifies himself as:*	The son of Rebecca (Gen. 29:12)	Egyptian (Ex. 2:19)
4	Marries:*	A woman he helped at the well (Rachel) (Gen. 29:30)	A woman he helped at the well (Tzipporah) (Ex. 2:21)
5	Profession in exile:	Shepherd (Gen. 30:31)	Shepherd (Ex. 3:1)
6	Employer:	Father-in-law (Gen. 29:15)	Father-in-law (Ex. 3:1)
7	Instructions from God	Return to his homeland (Gen. 31:3)	Return to his homeland (Ex. 3:10)
8	Response to God:*	Without protest – had already planned to go (Gen. 30:25)	Protests ("send someone else") (Ex. 3:11; 4:1, 10, 13)
	Manner of departure with family:*	ויקם יעקב וישא את בניו ואת נשיו על הגמלים (Gen. 31:17)	ויקח משה את אשתו ואת בניו וירכבם על החמר וישב ארצה מצרים ויקח משה את מטה האלהים בידו ( Ex. 4:20)

Upon arrival in Haran, Jacob comes to the town well. The town shepherds were waiting for everyone to arrive before uncovering the well, but when Rachel arrives, Jacob strides forward (ויגש), lifts the stone off the well, waters her sheep and kisses her. (Gen. 29:10) In contrast, when Moses arrives in Midian, Jethro’s daughters had begun to water their sheep when other shepherds come to drive them off. Moses rises up (ויקם) to save them and then waters their sheep (Exodus 2:17).

Jacob has a clear purpose for doing these actions: uniting with his family, especially the beautiful cousin he now begins to seek to court as his wife. He immediately identifies himself as the son of Rebecca and ingratiates himself in the family life of Laban’s household. Moses, on the other hand, swiftly rises up because of the injustice he sees (not unlike when he smites the Egyptian, see Exodus 2:11-12) and saves the women. They do not know his name – they assume he is just some Egyptian man – and it seems from the text that he only marries one of the women because her father specifically seeks him out. Therefore, whereas connection with family was primary in Jacob’s offer of assistance at the community well, the episode of Moses at the well highlights his attitude towards justice and helping those who are helpless.

Both become shepherds for their fathers-in-law, but eventually both are told to go back to their respective homelands. In Jacob’s case, he had already planned to leave Haran before God told him to leave. Jacob lived in Haran for many years, having many children and amassing much livestock for his father-in-law. But once Joseph is born – the son of the favored wife – Jacob is ready to go, as the verse states “and it was that when Rachel bore Joseph, Jacob said to Laban, send me and I will go to my own place, my land” (Genesis 30:25). Promised descendants by God, Jacob sees the culmination of this promise with the birth of Joseph and requests leave from Laban. It is only after getting sidetracked with his payment – the speckled and spotted sheep, which would be the livelihood in which to support his family – that God nudges him to return to the land of his fathers (Genesis 31:3).

Moses is called out of the wilderness by a burning bush to return to Egypt and save his brethren. He repeatedly expresses his concern that the job is not for him, inventing a variety of excuses. ¹ But God chooses Moses, becomes angry with Moses for his repeated excuses, and finally convinces Moses to go. There is no extended departure scene with his father-in-law and no talk of wages – it is purely about the mission.

As Jacob and Moses leave, the verses take care to tell us how they transported their family. While Moses saddles his wife and sons on the donkey (וירכבם), the verb used for Jacob’s transportation is a familiar one: he lifts them up (וישא). When Jacob starts out on his own after his dream of the heavenly ladder, in which he received God’s assurance, he raised himself up. Now, as he returns home, after again receiving divine assurance, he raises up his family as he travels to the next chapter of his life. The following verse adds that he also brought all the flocks he had amassed. The story of Moses has no similar use of the word וירכבם², but the second half of the verse states that he took the staff of God with him. Unlike Jacob’s construction of a large family dynasty, Moses simply walks alongside the donkey, alone with the staff of God on his mission to save the Jewish people.

Most of the parallels between the two characters end here. But Jacob’s focus on family can be seen in the future weekly parshiot. Next week in Vayishlach, Jacob splits his family into two camps, reasoning that even if Esau attacks, at least one camp will be spared. Following the abduction of Dinah, his focus is on building an alliance with Shechem, perhaps seeing a quick way to increase familial claims to the land he was promised. In Vayeishev, when Joseph is torn away from Jacob (or, as Jacob thinks, actually torn to pieces), Jacob is incredibly devastated. Not only was this the loss of the firstborn of his favored wife, but the loss of the son he saw as the reason to return to his homeland.

Moses similarly seeks justice for the Jews (while weathering their ingratitude). When their workload increases after he speaks to Pharaoh, he asks God why this happened. Later on, whenever the nation complains or does wrong, such as with the Golden Calf, Moses intervenes for the nation’s continued existence.³

While Jacob sought out his wives, livestock, and land, Moses sought to improve the lot of those in need. The names they have in Jewish tradition: Yaakov Avinu (Jacob our Forefather) and Moshe Rabbenu (Moses our Teacher), reflect the important differences in the way the Torah tells their story. Jacob focuses on creating a nation, but Moses takes care of the nation, becoming its leader and teacher.

Further thoughts:

• Rashi and the Midrash  note that the Torah writes that Jacob went with his children and his wives, but that Esau, in contrast, went with his wives and his children (Genesis 36:6), implying Esau was wicked for valuing the pleasure of his wives over the importance of his progeny. We find that in our verse with Moses, it is written that Moses goes with his wife and then his sons, just as it does for Esau. Should the Midrash connect here too, and if so, what does that say about Moses’s relationship with his wife and his sons? Rashi notes (Numbers 12:1) that Moses separated from his wife. The Midrash also states that the false priest of the idol of Micha (Judges 17-18) is a descendant of Moses. We know that Moses’s sons do not become leaders of the Israelites following Moses’ death, but that Joshua, his student and disciple, became the leader instead.
• Jacob had an unhealthy, strained relationship with Laban and left without asking permission. Moses had a loving relationship with Jethro and asked permission before leaving.
•  Genesis Rabbah (78:9) quotes Rav Yanai, who said when Esau and Jacob embraced, each cried. Jacob cried tears of joy, but Esau wept because he broke his teeth on Jacob’s neck, which had become “shayish,” marble. (He had attempted to bite Jacob’s neck.) Rabbi Abahu said in the name of Rabbi Yochanan that we learn this from “your neck is like an ivory tower” (Songs 7:5). Similarly, Exodus Rabbah (1:31) states that Pharoah brought a sword unlike any other and hit Moses’ neck ten time, but Moses’s neck had become like an “amud shen”, a pillar of ivory, as it says, “your neck is like an ivory tower” (Songs 7:5). The same Rav Yanai, who just used the same pasuk to explain Jacob and Esau, disagrees with this interpretation. Both of these midrashic statements are brought together in Song of Songs Rabbah (zayin hay alef), with some additions and variations.
•  Do either of the Midrashim have any connection to the Jewish people being a stiff-necked nation (Ex. 32:9 and 33:3)? What does this say about this being a positive or negative trait?
• Both Jacob and Moses give blessings to the tribes at the end of their lives. How do these blessings reflect, or not reflect, their different guiding motivations?

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1 Perhaps it is his previous experience with helping the Israelites that has discouraged him. After being raised in the Egyptian palace, he struck an Egyptian guard who was abusing an Israelite, killing him, and buried him in the sand. The next day, he saw two Israelites fighting and attempted to break up the fight. Instead of seeing him as a savior of the Israelites, they mocked him, asking who made him their leader and was he planning to kill them too? (Ex. 2:13-14).

2 Although there is the twice-used word of “vayeshev”, to settle, in Midian when he arrives there and the word “vayashav”, to return is used for his trip back to Egypt.

3 He even rejects a new nation founded on his own progeny (Ex 32:9-14) – all the more interesting in light of the parallels to Jacob.