Sahavuot – Yitro’s Hidden Advice

Translations my own.  Gray text omitted from spoken presentation.

Note this d’var Torah also appears under Parashat Yitro due to the texts discussed coming from that parahshah.

One of the wonderful things about studying Torah is that the seemingly 1000^th time you look at a text, you can see something you’ve never noticed before.  One example of this happened to me recently and I guess everyone can let me know if I was absent the day this was taught, or maybe this is something that isn’t talked about enough.

For this I am going to rewind a bit from the Torah reading for Shavuot, which is about mattan Torah, revelation of divine law at Sinai.  Immediately preceding that story is the story of Moshe’s (Moses’s) father-in-law Yitro (Jethro) seeing Moshe spending his whole day acting as a judge for the Israelites.  Yitro criticizes Moshe and offers some advice.  Until recently, if I were asked to summarize Yitro’s thoughts, I would have said that Yitro criticizes Moshe for doing too much and advises him to delegate responsibility to judges. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard this story summarized in this way countless times, and I’m sure I’ve retold it that way.  However, what I realized the last time we read this story in the weekly Torah reading is that this synopsis leaves out an important part of both Yitro’s critique and advice.

Let’s take the advice first.  To only mention that Yitro advises Moshe to delegate authority skips a verse.  Yitro first says:

וְהִזְהַרְתָּה אֶתְהֶם אֶת הַחֻקִּים וְאֶת הַתּוֹרֹת וְהוֹדַעְתָּ לָהֶם אֶת הַדֶּרֶךְ יֵלְכוּ בָהּ וְאֶת הַמַּעֲשֶׂה אֲשֶׁר יַעֲשׂוּן:

Teach [the Israelites] the laws and instructions and teach them the path that they should follow and the deeds that they should do.[1]

So, the first piece of advice that Yitro gives is not to appoint other leaders, but to educate the masses.  Confirming the importance of this part of Yitro’s advice, when in Deuteronomy Moshe retells the story of appointing and instructing judges, he closes by, seemingly out of left field, saying:

וָאֲצַוֶּה אֶתְכֶם בָּעֵת הַהִוא אֵת כָּל הַדְּבָרִים אֲשֶׁר תַּעֲשׂוּן:

And I commanded you at that moment regarding all the things that you should do.[2]

Inherent in Yitro’s advice is also a criticism of Moshe, which my friend Avi Ray pointed out to me when I shared my new understanding of Yitro’s advice him.  Avi noted that Yitro is responding in part to how Moshe explained what Moshe was doing:

כִּי יִהְיֶה לָהֶם דָּבָר בָּא אֵלַי וְשָׁפַטְתִּי בֵּין אִישׁ וּבֵין רֵעֵהוּ וְהוֹדַעְתִּי אֶת חֻקֵּי הָ-אֱלֹהִים וְאֶת  תּוֹרֹתָיו:

When they have an issue it comes to me and I judge between people and I teach them God’s laws and instructions.[3]

To this point, Moshe’s leadership of the people was primarily reactive.  When issues came up, Moshe would resolve the issue by telling people God’s law.  Yitro, however, is advising Moshe to be proactive.  Teach the people Torah and give them guidelines so that they can know what God expects of them in the first place.

This understanding of Yitro’s advice, I think, offers important insight into our relationship to mattan Torah, which we celebrate on Shavuot.  It seems to me that Yitro’s advice provides the impetus, or at least recognizes the need, for mattan Torah.  Moshe thought that understanding and implementing the divine will was his responsibility.  Instead, Yitro says “וְהוֹדַעְתָּ לָהֶם אֶת הַדֶּרֶךְ יֵלְכוּ בָהּ teach them the path that they should follow.”  God’s will is to be understood and applied not exclusively by Moses or even by appointed judges, but rather primarily by the people who are all responsible to know God’s ways!  It is the public dissemination of Torah touched off at Mount Sinai that creates that reality.  To this point, Moshe was spoon feeding Torah to the people on an as-needed basis. But Torah is, as we read in Deuteronomy, “מוֹרָשָׁה קְהִלַּת יַעֲקֹב an inheritance of the assembly of Jacob,”[4] widely available for the people to study, comprehend, and implement, with judges available for consultation on an as-needed basis, or as Moshe puts it in Deuteronomy, “כִּי יִפָּלֵא מִמְּךָ דָבָר when a matter is confounding to you.”[5]  Perhaps Moshe felt that that it was too difficult to give the entire community a working understanding of God’s will.  But he sings a different tune in Deuteronomy:

לֹא בַשָּׁמַיִם הִוא לֵאמֹר מִי יַעֲלֶה לָּנוּ הַשָּׁמַיְמָה וְיִקָּחֶהָ לָּנוּ וְיַשְׁמִעֵנוּ אֹתָהּ וְנַעֲשֶׂנָּה.  …

[God’s instructions] are not in the heavens so that you might say “who will ascend to the heavens and take it for us and teach us so we may follow it. …

כִּי קָרוֹב אֵלֶיךָ הַדָּבָר מְאֹד בְּפִיךָ וּבִלְבָבְךָ לַעֲשֹׂתוֹ:

Rather it is very close to your lips and your heart to do it.[6]

I think this understanding of Yitro’s advice also sheds new light on something else Yitro says.  He tells Moshe that if Moshe keeps doing what he is doing, “נָבֹל תִּבֹּל גַּם אַתָּה גַּם הָעָם both you and the people will wither.”[7]  I have always read this to mean that if Moshe continued to be overworked, his job performance would suffer to the detriment of the people, and there is certainly some truth to that reading. But now, I think another point Yitro is making is that Moshe was infantilizing the people and depriving them of moral agency.

This framing of mattan Torah also has a great deal to say about our relationship with our leaders.  We should yearn for leadership that rather than dictating what we do nurtures our moral agency and guides us toward identifying and implementing God’s will.  The same is true for what we need to do in our own roles as mentors and advisers to those who seek our help, whether it is a friend or a colleague, a child, or a loved one, or anyone else to whom we provide counsel.

<ONLY FOR SECOND DAY OF SHAVUOT>As we prepare to say Yizkor, I think we can also think about how our departed loved ones shaped our lives in a similar fashion.  The most important impact our loved ones had on us is not any particular piece of advice or material support they provided, but rather how they contributed to making each of us the people that we are, how they empowered us to be our own selves and enabled us to integrate small sparks of their being into our own nature. We pray that their guidance inspires us into the future and that when we are gone there will be many others whom we have empowered to move forward with wisdom, compassion, and love of Torah.

As we commemorate revelation at Sinai, let us rededicate ourselves to our role in Torah, so that we may uncover the many ways that Torah empowers us and enables us to identify and implement God’s will.

[1] Exodus 18:20.

[2] 1:18.

[3] Exodus 18:16.

[4] Deut. 33:4.

[5] 17:8.

[6] Deut. 30:12,14.

[7] Exodus 18:18.