Rabbi Binyamin Yuhanan Parshat Yitro 1

good evening we're learning parat uh parat is on page 395 of the artash and in parat we have the famous Ten Commandments uh we will speak a little bit about that and as well as the the great Revelation the great encounter between the Jewish people and God himself and therefore parat is very important to the the Jewish religion to Jewish philosophy to understand uh how do we know that God exists and uh how do we know that the Torah is true so let us start on page 395 chapter 18 verse1 He the minister of midan the father inlaw of Moshe heard everything that God did to Moshe and to Isel his people that Hashem had taken Isel out of Egypt now we know that Moshe married H's daughter and he left hro and his wife and his two children and he went to Egypt to take the Jewish people out and mosha was away for one year because the plagues the 10 plagues took about 10 months each plague was about uh a month and now uh now somebody's asking a practical question are women obligated to listen to The Ten Commandments read from the Torah in schul and the answer is no women are not obligated if they want they can read it from the Kash at home if they have opportunity to to go to synagogue any week is good uh they're not obligated to uh go to synagogue to listen to the Torah so after the Jewish people came outro decided not to wait for mosha to come and pick up his uh wife and children yro decided to deliver them to mosha and by the way yro decided to see the Great Jewish nation that he heard so much about now by the way we know that yro used to live in Egypt himself yro originally came from Egypt and yro was um an advisor to Paro yro himself was not an Egyptian he was from midan but he worked and lived in Egypt for many years and when he was the advisor to par there came a time when he had to be very honest and Par asked I received a prophecy from my astr astronom astrologist that a baby is going to be born who will do a lot of trouble in Egypt and the baby is going to be born around now sh should I decree death on all babies and he had three advisors the three famous people one was hro one was bam and one was yov y um bam said yes kill the Jews kill the babies eov remained quiet he didn't know what to say he knew that the king already made up his mind and um he was scared if if he really didn't want par to kill the Jews but he knew he can say don't kill them because the Egyptian nation and Par himself want to get rid of the Jews so he remained quiet Andro now was faced with a dilemma bam said kill the Jews iov is quiet and uh po was tricky and therefore he said anyone who is quiet in this case it suits me I will say being silence is agreement and therefore he said I already have two people who agree that the Jews should be killed but yro said what am I going to do if I say don't kill the Jews par will still kill them because he already has two people one saying yes and one being quiet which par interprets as yes also so my saying don't kill the Jews will not help if I stay quiet for sure it's not going to help what going to do so he decided to run away and you escaped from Egypt without giving power an answer and in the ancient times the Kings had a rule that if they make an evil decree and after that one of the members of the assembly who made that decree if one of them dies they see it as a sign from God that God disapproves their decree and they cancel the decree and there were times that um members of parliament or assembly who loved the Jews and they didn't want to hurt the Jews there were times when they actually uh committed suicide because they knew if they die the decree will be cancelled and thereby they saved the Jewish Nation um and so yra ran away and now par was faced with a question what happened to ifro died then I'm supposed to cancel the decree but yro disappear we don't know if he died or not so maybe he's still alive and maybe I should go ahead with it decree to kill the Jewish babies so he said I I'm not sure and therefore I will only put in action half of the decree I'm not I'm not going to kill all the Jewish babies I'm only going to kill the boys and so the fact that hro ran away did help the Jewish people halfway it saved the girls so we see that hro was uh a seeker of Truth and even though he didn't have any particular love for the Jews but he said why should we kill an innocent nation and he was willing to risk his life to go against that decree he ran away and he settled back in his home country in midan and then when Moshe came he of course wanted Moshe to marry his daughter because he he realized Moshe is from that generation that he yro himself tried to help he realized that at the time when he ran away that's when mosha was born so even though he didn't help mosha directly but he tried he suffered also from the same decree as mosha suffered from so they already had a connection so when met him he was happy to give him his daughter Tora as a wife now yro heard that this great nation survived Egypt that the plan of the evil par did not work the Jewish people still survived and not only they survived they flourished and they became the nation of God and they came out of Egypt not only that they came out with great Miracles and now they are about to meet God himself so he hurried and he came now verse two on page 395 the father-in-law of mosha took the wife of mosha after she had been sent away and her two sons gam and Eleazar verse 5 yro the father-in-law of mosha came to mosha with his sons and wife to the Wilderness where he was encamped by the Mountain of God he said to mosha I your father-in-law yro have come to you with your wife and her two sons with her he sent Messengers to relay this message to Moshe so as soon as Moshe heard the message verse 7 mosha went out to meet his father-in-law and he prostrated himself he bowed down to the ground and kissed him and they inquired about each other's well-being then they came to the tent mosha told his father-in-law everything that Hashem had done to parro and Egypt for Israel's sake now on page all the travail that had befallen them on the way and that Hashem had rescued them so yra already heard General ideas of Exodus and now mosha told him in detail step by step how all the plagues happened and how the splitting of the sea happened verse 9 hro rejoiced over all the good that Hashem had done for Israel that God had rescued the nation from the hand of Egypt Andro said blessed is Hashem who has rescued you from the hand of Egypt and from the hand of Paro who has rescued the people from under the hand of Egypt and yro continued praising God now I know that Hashem is greater than all the Gods from here we see that yro tried all the other religions until this moment hro tried to serve all the idols in the world and now he conclusively said I now I know that Hashem is greater than all the gods and he can actually say it because he experienced every other ideology in the world and that is why on the first page um on the previous page the Torah calls the minister of midan Minister means the priest Ken he was the spiritual leader of midan and he dragged his country from one Idol to another Idol Idol to another Idol and midan changed the religion until they got tired of him and they said stop enough already how many Idols are there and they actually told him if you don't stop we're going to kick you out and then when when he heard about the Jewish religion and the Jewish god and started practicing it they the people of his town actually demoted him they kicked him out from the office and uh that's one that's when Moshe met him and that was another reason why he was happy that his wife should that his daughter should marry Moshe so now he was practicing Judaism which means monotheism already for many years but now he's more convinced now he says my faith in God is strengthened when I hear that God made such Miracles and he said what what impressed him the most verse 11 continues how do I know that Hashem is greater than all other gods for in the very matter in which the Egyptians had conspired against them and then the Torah doesn't finish the sentence we have to uh finish it ourselves God punished the Egyptians in the very same way in which Egyptians had conspired against the Jewish people how did it happen the Egyptians conspired against the Jews and they said let us kill them by throwing their babies into the water of the Nile and Hashem used the water to punish the Egyptians not only in Egypt with the water of the Nile turning into blood and then water of the Nile producing frogs but even now God drowned the army of Egypt in the Reed sea when the sea split to let the Jews to go through God enticed the Egyptians to come in to their own death and the water covered them so this is now someone is asking question why didn't the Torah finish the sentence and the answer is that this is a style this is a certain poetic style that you start a sentence and you let your listeners finish it for you um You can call it a rhetorical question and then the The Listener is supposed to answer something that that is already known or it's a statement in a question form we have different um literary uh ways of of writing things and which which allows you not to which allows you not to finish the sentence and yes it does happen very often in the Torah the Torah very often does not provide full information for example the Torah Will O will often say just the verbs and not uh tell us who the subject is because in the verb can already um refer to a male or female or plural and so the Torah often says V and he said doesn't say who said it could be this guy or could be that guy or very often it describes an action but doesn't say who did the action to whom so on one hand if you look at the context you can figure it out on the other hand these omissions allow us to put additional layers of meaning into the Torah so uh yes the Torah employs this very often it sometimes does it um when it when when God gives a warning just like a human being will say if you do it be warned and doesn't say what's going to happen so God says the same thing and if you do it and that's the end of the sentence so what's going to be if I do it oh you can only imagine what's going to be so again uh this is an example where the sentence is not finished and the person is supposed to figure it out himself now uh we continue with verse 12 now by the way why did it impress yro so much that God punished the Egyptians in the same way that they tried to hurt the Jews because it shows God's total control over nature a a human court if they cannot kill someone precisely in the in a way that he deserves what will they do they'll kill him in some other way as long as they kill him for example if somebody um if somebody kills his fellow Shalom with a gun the court might not use the gun they might put him on electric chair or give him a poison uh shot why because they realize that human powers are limited I want to punish the criminal in the same way that he hurt the victim but I can't punish him in exactly the same way because who knows how much pain did the victim experience who knows exactly which tissues did the bullet penetrate or the knife penetrate and so when we administer punishment the punishment has to be approximate the punishment can never be precise and that is why the Torah says when when the Tor says an eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth it cannot be taken literally and our sages tell us it means monetary compensation for example if somebody knocks someone else's tooth we don't say go and knock out his tooth because how can you knock out his tooth exactly the same way that he knocked out your tooth maybe he'll maybe you will knock out a different tooth or maybe your tooth was already shaky or maybe you have a full mouth of teeth and losing one tooth is not a big deal but maybe he only has one tooth left if you knock it out he's not going to be able to eat so or furthermore maybe you are more tolerant to pain and he is less and so he's going to experience more pain or perhaps he was very quick and he knocked out your tooth in such a manner that you didn't even feel it and you slow and you're going to have to hit him a few times to knock out his tooth and he's going to experience a lot of pain and therefore the sages say whenever the Torah says that do to him as he did to you a eye for a eye tooth for a tooth it all only means estimate and give monetary value of the damage so again that shows our limitation but God is not like that Hashem knows exactly what happened he can give a precise definition of the Damage Done and not only that he can deliver the exact punishment to the person that deserves it not more and not less not only that he can use the same tools and elements that the aggressor used against the victim and he he can punish the aggressor in exact same quantity and the same quality using the same tools as he used himself because he is in total control of Nature and he has complete knowledge so to God said they used water I'm going to control water to use it against them the water of Nile and then the water of the Reed sea so when y saw it he said it can only be the real God it's not like Idols work not like black magic works that it's approximately it's somewhat the same no God who is the only one who can do it because he is in control of all forces he can deliver a precise blow exactly what the criminal deserves now verse 12 he throw the father-in-law of Moshe took an elevation offering and feast offerings for God as soon as he realized how great God is his Clarity of God's existence became 100% he right away said I have an obligation to serve God and he brought offerings and they sat down to eat verse 13 our sages say that the next verse happened four months later it was on the next day how can it be 4 months later when it says on the next day and the meaning is something else happened the previous day what happened on the previous day which means four months later but before this day it was yur and Moshe came down from the Mount Si with the second set of the tablets which means in the in these four months what happened m after greeting the Revelation at Sinai happened the Jewish people receiv received the Ten Commandments mosha went up to the mountain for 40 days then when mosha came down he saw that the Jewish people made the idol the golden calf Moshe went after destroying the Idol mosha went up to the mountain for another 40 days and he prayed that God should forgive the Jewish people and not destroy them and his request was granted then Moshe came and told the Jewish people the good news and then he said I'm going to go again and ask God to give you Torah the second time and mosha went up to the mountain the third time for another 40 Days begging God to Grant the Jewish people total forgiveness and give them the Torah again and 40 Days Later Hashem agreed Hashem forgave the Jewish people completely and this was on yum kipur 120 days 40 days plus 40 days plus 40 days gives us four months and after the Jewish people were forgiven that day became y kipur forever the day of forgiveness so after mosha came down with the Ten Commandments the following day this is what happened it was on the next day that mosha set to to judge people because for these uh 4 months he was not available to judge people he was on the mountain now finally the Jewish people received the Torah second time and mosha said now if anyone has questions come to me I will answer if anyone has a dispute you disagree come to me and I will judge between you and the people stood by mosha from the morning until the evening there were a lot of people many questions Torah is new to them the father-in-law of Moshe saw everything and he said what is this thing that you do to the people why do you sit alone with all the people standing by you from morning to evening you shouldn't be doing this alone it's too much now we're on page 399 Moses said to his father-in-law because the people come to me to seek God I'm the one who spent 120 days next to God learning from him so they want to ask firsthand information when they have a matter something they don't know one comes to me and I judge the between a man and his fellow and I make known the decrees of God and his teachings I educate between them and I teach them verse 17 the father-in-law of Moshe said to him the thing that you do is not good this is the job of the father-in-law and mother-in-law to point out what their son-in-law or daughter-in-law are doing wrong I'm joking for sure um that's not their job of the son of the father-in-law mother-in-law but we see that even great people like Moshe had a father-in-law who criticized him and by the way we know that yro was the advisor of par himself so hro is used to being an advisor a consultant so he just couldn't help it he sees everything that's wrong and he wants to help so he told mosha Verse 18 you will surely become worn out you as well as this people that is with you for this matter is too hard for you you will not be able to do it alone now what mosha was supposed to say was that you know everything is up to God when I was on the mountain I didn't need to sleep I didn't need to eat or drink if God wants he will give me power you are judging me according to your human standards I'm able to just ask God for more strength and I can judge people not only from morning till evening I can judge them throughout the night as well I don't need to sleep I don't need to eat but mosha didn't say that and our sages actually criticize mosha for that they say why be afraid just because you have a challenge ask God for help before you give up so verse 19 says listen to my voice I shall advise you which means I'm going to tell you what to do on this Earthly plane I'm going to advise you with my human eyes what I think you should do to protect your physical body Moshe again could have said to thank you but we're operating here on a higher plane this is not the regular physical world over here we're surrounded by clouds we have God's presence with us we became Immortal but again mosha didn't do that so hro gave him advice and gave him a blessing may God be with you