30 Jan YISRO: WHY I AM A PROUD JEW – THREE TRUTHS WHICH COMPELLED YISRO TO JOIN OUR PEOPLE

The Story of Yisro
The opening of this
week’s parsha tells
the story of the priest
of Midian, Yisro, who
chooses to come to
the wilderness to spend
time with the fledgling Jewish nation.
“Yisro, the priest of Midian, the father-in-law
of Moshe, heard of all that G-d did for Moshe
and His people Israel; that G-d had taken
Israel out of Egypt.” He took his daughter and
two grandchildren and traveled to the
wilderness to Moshe and the new Jewish
nation. The Talmud asks this question: What
did Yisro hear which inspired him to come to
the Sinai desert? The Talmud cites three
opinions:
Rabbi Yehoshua says, he heard of the war of
Amalek against the Bnei Yisrael and he came.
Rabbi Elazar Hamudaei says, he heard of the
giving of the Torah and he came. Rabbi Eliezer
says: He heard about the splitting of the sea
and he came.
This seems strange. The Torah clearly states
what Yisro heard: “And Yisro, the priest of
Midian, the father-in-law of Moshe, heard of
all that G-d did for Moshe and His people
Israel; that G-d had taken Israel out of Egypt!”
That is why he picked himself up and traveled
to the Sinai desert. Why does the Talmud ask,
“What did he hear that made him come?” And
why does the Talmud offer different reasons
than those stated in the text? Also, what is the
logic behind these three Talmudic opinions?
Must we always argue about everything? Why
do these eminent chachamim attribute Yisro’s
sacrifice to another factor?
A Player, Not a Fan
The question that perturbed the chachamim
was this. Prior to his arrival, Yisro was living
in great honor and distinction. At the height of
his career as the religious leader of Midian,
Yisro was surrounded by riches and glory, as
was the destiny of the Pagan priests of yore.
Yet he left behind all of it, only to arrive in a
barren wilderness, eager to hear the words of
Torah. He no longer saw himself as a Priest of
Midian; instead, he identified himself as the
father-in-law of Moshe. Note the question of
the Talmud: “mah shmuah shama uba?” what
did Yisro hear which compelled him to
COME? Why would a person of such stature
abandon everything in order to pursue an
attraction to Torah? What compels an
aristocratic spiritual leader to abandon his
comfortable habitat and glorious lifestyle and
come join a nation of nomads in a desert? Yes,
the Torah tells us that he heard what G-d did
for Israel and that he took them out of Egypt.
But Yisro could have been content with
hearing the stories from far, watching them on
CNN or Fox News and reading the blogs.
What motivated him to say goodbye to his
past and become one of three million Jews?
You can sit on your couch on Sunday and be
a fan of one team or another; you can be an

admirer, a cheerer, a supporter. But why did
Yisro feel the need to undergo a metamorphosis
from spectator to player? Why did he have to
link his fate to the Jewish fate?
For this, the sages present three alternative
answers. For one, Yisro witnessed the war of
Amalek against Bnei Yisrael; for the other,
Yisro heard of the Torah. For the third, he
heard of the splitting of the sea. These three
events capture the three timeless features
which embody the Jewish story.
The Mystery of Hate
“Rabbi Yehoshua says, he heard of the war of
Amalek against the Bnei Yisrael and he came.”
The war of Amalek represented the timeless
enigma of anti-Semitism. Here was Amalek, a
strong and secure nation, unprovoked and
unthreatened, yet this Amalekite nation found
it necessary to declare war on a young nation
that has just set itself free from decades of
brutal persecution and suffering. The Jews
have been in Pharaoh’s massive concentration
camps for 86 years—beaten, crushed, and
murdered mercilessly. Their infants were
plunged into the Nile River, as the men were
subjected to slave labor and torture. Now,
these people were finally free. Merely a few
weeks after their liberation, Amalek declared a
sudden bloody war on Israel. It was not a
territorial dispute which ignited the conflict, as
Amalek did not even make the claim that the
“Jews were occupying his homeland.” The
Jews were traveling in the wilderness, remote
from Amalek’s territory. Nor were there any
political, economic, or military motivations,
as Israel was minding its own business and not
intending even to visit Amalek’s country.
Pharaoh at least had the excuse of fearing that
the Jews would take over Egypt. What was
Amalek’s excuse to come and kill Jews? The
answer is: He did not need an excuse. This
was not rational, calculated hatred. He just
hated them because of their very being. When
hate is rational, based on some fear that has
some logic to it, even if it is unjustified, then it
can be reasoned with and brought to an end. If
I hate you because I feel that you undermine
by business, or you don’t respect me in the
company, the hatred has a cure. If I can see
that you mean me no harm, or that you too
have been operating out of fear, we can mend
the relationship. But how about unconditional,
irrational hatred? What happens if I hate you
because of your very existence? Such hate
cannot be reasoned with. Amalek had no
reason—not even an unjustified reason, based
on unjust fear or insecurity—to attack Israel.
This was irrational, groundless hate. As long
as Jews existed, Amalek could not feel
wholesome. With irrational hate, it is
impossible to reason. It has no cause, no logic.
Therefore, it may never go away. This is what
Yisro observed. He realized that for some odd
reason the Jew inspires irrational venom and
animosity in the hearts of certain peoples.
They hate the Jews simply because they are
Jews. Something about the Jew drives them

mad. Yisro, an assiduous student of history,
realized that there must be something
incredibly holy, Divine, and good about the
Jew which evokes such hatred toward him or
her in the heart of every despot. For Yisro, this
was enough to know where to cast his lot.
Show me your enemies and I will tell you who
you are. Draw up a list of Israel’s foes—from
the days of yore to this very day—and you will
see that they were and are all ruthless tyrants
who would sell their own people for their
greed and hunger for power. Stalin, Hitler,
Saddam Hussein, Gamel Abdal Nasser, Yasser
Arafat, Osama Bin Laden, Hafez Al Asad,
Hassan Nasrallah, and Qassem Soleimani
were not—and are not—only enemies of
Israel and the Jews. They constitute and
remain a threat to every good and decent
person the world over. Seeing who hates Jews
can be a powerful, if a bit strange, source of
Jewish pride.
The Grandeur of Torah
“Rabbi Elazar Hamudaei says, he heard of
the giving of the Torah and he came.” Rabbi
Elazar Hamudei’s point of view is that though
anti-Semitism can teach us about the moral
stature of the Jewish people, this was not
enough. What enthralled Yisro about the
Jewish story was not just that some
people hated Jews with an irrational passion,
but that G-d loved them, and He gave them
His Torah. When Yisro heard of the powerful
institutions of Judaism—its obsession with
education, charity, justice, compassion, loving
the stranger, respecting the slave, feeding the
poor, honoring the old, giving dignity to the
sick and the mentally challenged; when Yisro
learned of the Mitzvos of Torah—Shabbos,
Mikvah, Kashrus, Tefilin, prayer, study; when
he discovered the ethical foundations of
Judaism—that no one is above the law, that
each person was created in G-d’s image and
has infinite dignity, that history has a purpose,
and that each of us was conceived in love to
fulfill a mission—when the Midianite chief
Pagan priest learned of all this, he fell in love
with Torah and joined Bnei Yisrael. Now,
3300 years later, we often take for granted the
contribution of the Torah to civilization. But
Yisro did not. We take for granted the quality
of life shaped by Torah values and rituals over
millennia. Shabbos creates happier homes;
Torah education creates more balanced
teenagers. The emphasis on tradition and
history diminishes the generational gap
between parents and children. The laws of
Jewish burial, sitting shivah, and saying
kaddish are deeply comforting during times of
loss. The sense of community helps people in
times of crisis. All of these concepts were new
and novel ideas and Yisro, a brilliant man of
ideas, understood the majestic grandeur of
Torah. This is what inspired him to link his
destiny to the Nation of Torah.
The Super-Natural Quality
“Rabbi Eliezer says: He heard about the
splitting of the sea and he came.” Rabbi

Eliezer takes it a step further. If it was only for
Torah itself, Yisro could have remained on his
hammock in Midian, sipping a pinna-colada
and watching a Torah webcast on TheYeshiva.
net, or reading a good Jewish book. What
inspired him to leave his natural environment
to join a crowded wilderness with millions of
Jews? When he heard of the splitting of the
sea. The splitting of the sea demonstrated to
Yisro another component of the Jewish story:
The Bnei Yisrael transcended the laws of
nature and the deterministic patterns of
history. The largest seas, mightiest oceans, and
fiercest tsunamis would not drown them. They
would confront many overwhelming seas
throughout their history, they would encounter
impossible odds, and yet they would cross
every sea and come out on the other side,
stronger, more vibrant, more alive, and
determined. A nation that endured crusades,
inquisitions, pogroms, massacres, gas
chambers, crematoriums, and suicide
bombings—and yet inexplicably emerged,
pulsating with a love for life and a zest for
peace, this is a people whose narrative
transcends the formulas of natural history.
Yisro understood what the great Russian
novelist, Leo Tolstoy, articulated in a 1908
article: “The Jew is that sacred being who has
brought down from heaven the everlasting
fire, and has illuminated with it the entire
world. He is the religious source, spring, and
fountain out of which all the rest of the peoples
have drawn their beliefs and their religions.
The Jew is the emblem of eternity. He, who
neither slaughter nor torture of thousands of
years could destroy, he who neither fire, nor
sword, nor Inquisition was able to wipe off the
face of the earth. He, who was the first to
produce the Oracles of G-d. He, who has been
for so long the Guardian of Prophecy and has
transmitted it to the rest of the world. Such a
nation cannot be destroyed. The Jew is as
everlasting as Eternity itself.” Yisro
understood that to experience this immortality
he must leave his mansion in Midian and join
the nomads in the desert. To become part of a
story that transcends nature, you must
transcend your own nature and actively join
the symphony of eternity. Yisro was not
Jewish. Yet he made an awesome sacrifice in
order to join the Jewish people and internalize
Torah. We were given this gift by birth. Will
we not leave our comfort zones to embrace it,
celebrate it, study it, and make it part of our
lives?