Deep thoughts for the week -- Yitro, 25 January 2008 / 18 Shevat 5768

There's this great union at work in this week's Parshah, Yitro.

Before this point, Eretz Yisrael never really said "Baruch Hashem" (Praise G-d) in the same way we do today. They had not been given Torah and while the prophets certainly knew and practiced the mitzvot in advance,the general population, not so much.

So here in Yitro, Moshe's father-in-law (Jethro, or Yitro) comes to the Israelites camped at Har Tzinai (Mount Sinai), and has Moshe come down to him. Later, Moshe himself is the vehicle for Hashem coming down to the Jewish people.

So before this point, the Jewish people are not able to bring Hashem down to their place, but afterwards, through the peformance of Mitzvot, they can do so! This is why places like Har Tzinai and other sites beforehand are not holy sites in the same sense as the Temple Mount, where mitzvot of all forms were performed, and thus embuing the site with Hashem's holiness.

And what is amazing about this is the role Yitro, a non-Jewish priest, has in all this! Yitro had studied and prayed before all the pagan idols and found them lacking.

When word spread of Hashem's deeds against Pharaoh, most of the ancient world trembled in fear. The exceptiosn were the Amalekites, which believed that Hashem was not really with the Jewish people, and their victory was a fluke, and Yitro, who understood the lesson here, that the Egyptians had sought to end the Jewish people through water (by drowning the first born) and how were then they themselves drowned pursuing the Jewish people. Yitro understood that Hashem is a just god, sought out his son-in-law Moshe, and joined with the Jewish people.

Shabbat Shalom!