Today I want to focus on one of my favorite Biblical characters, Jethro, who has a small but significant part in this week's portion, Beha'a'lo'techa.
A bit of history: We first meet Jethro, a priest of the Midian people, after Moses escapes from Egypt because he murdered an Egyptian guard who was hitting a Jew. During his wonderings, Moses helps Jethro's daughters out of a sticky situation and waters their flock. When Jethro hears their report of an Egyptian man who helped them out, Jethro basically says "how could you let such a mensch go! Get him over here and let's have a meal together." He may well have had marriage plans from the get-go!
Moses ends up marrying one of his daughters, Zipporah, and Yitro's descendants even warrant a portion of land in Eretz Yisrael - the city of Jericho (Judges 1:16).
Yitro is also said to have made a key contribution to the Jewish lexicon. When Yitro met Moses in the desert after the Exodus, and Moses told him that transpired, both for the good and the bad, Jethro basically responded "Baruch HaShem!" In fact, he was the first to use the word "baruch," meaning blessed or praised, in this most traditional sense.
(Exodus 18:10)
Yitro's most famous Biblical escapade, and the one that earned him his own parsha in the Torah, is when he serves as a kind of judicial consultant and teacher to Moses. Moses is exhausted and stressed out from sitting in judgement of the people all day, so Jethro advises Moses to delegate responsibility in the legal system, allowing local chieftains to rule on routine cases, with more challenging cases getting appealed up the line. Only the most challenging cases find their way to Moses.
We find echoes of this legal system all the way from the Sanhedrin to the United States Judiciary today. Not bad for a former priest of a foreign people who may or may not have ever converted to Judaism! The Talmud debates this question at length, without a definitive answer.
All this brings us to this week's portion: B'nai Israel has been arranged in their traveling formations, inaugurated the Mishkan and are journeying/laying camp in accordance with the coming and goings of the divine cloud that rests above the Mishkan. When the cloud is there, the people stay in camp, and when the cloud "goes up," they break camp and follow Moses. All in all, the movements are coordinated, orderly, and divinely inspired.
One day, Yitro tells Moses:
לֹא אֵלֵךְ כִּי אִם אֶל אַרְצִי וְאֶל מוֹלַדְתִּי אֵלֵךְ:
He said to him, I won't go [to the Promised Land], for I will go to my land and my birthplace. (Numbers 10:30)
As a side note, the argument I referred to earlier over Jethro's conversion is based on his verse - whether or not Jethro is going back to convert his countrymen, or simply to return home.
Anyhow, Moses is extremely distressed by Jethro's request, and counters with a beautiful, though somewhat puzzling reply:
וַיֹּאמֶר, אַל נָא תַּעֲזֹב אֹתָנוּ, כִּי עַל כֵּן יָדַעְתָּ חֲנֹתֵנוּ בַּמִּדְבָּר, וְהָיִיתָ לָּנוּ לְעֵינָיִם:
He said, Please don't leave us, for because you are familiar with our encampments in the desert and you will be our guide. (Numbers 10:31)
There are three parts to this statement - don't leave us, you are familiar with our encampments, and you are/will be our guide.
נא תעזוב, don't leave us, is pretty clear. The rest of the verse is trickier.
According to Rashi, 'you are familiar with our encampments' has two possible meanings. The first one is literal, that Jethro is very helpful with finding suitable camping places, because he is more at home in the desert than the Israelites. This explanation is a bit weak to me, because it is none other than God who is deciding when and where B'nai Israel makes camp, so why would Moses need a mortal guide?
That being said, there is a certain parallel to early Zionist history here. When the Halutzim, pioneers, returned to the land, they needed guides that would help them learn the ways the land - it's wadis and oasises, as well as it's food sources. There are numerous stories of these desert Jews who learned Arabic and interacted closely with the Arab population. Besides, someone had to teach these boys from the shtetl how to make real coffee!
Seriously though, Rashi's other explanation, inspired by the Targum, provides serious food for thought. This is that Yitro had seen the miracles in the desert first hand, so now he was one of God's people as well.
If the vision in the "Aleinu" prayer is to come to pass, when all people will know the one true God, Yitro can serve as a model for us to reach out to other faith communities in the world. Have they also not been a witness/partner in God's miracles? Not only do we witness God's miracles every day, but we share an obsession with reading about these very same miracles in our shared history.
Can Yitro serve as religious figure that actually unites people of different religions, as opposed to dividing them?
In fact, Jethro is seen as a prophet is both Islam and the Druze religion.
To Muslims, he is known as Shu'ayb, and is one of only five Arabian prophets mentioned in the Koran. He was known as an "eloquent preacher amongst the prophets" for his rhetorical abilities. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jethro_%28Bible%29) This is strikingly similar to the Jewish story about the man who offered the first formal blessing.
Very little is known of the Druze faith to outsiders, but they apparently believe that Saladin was promised victory over the Crusaders only if he would visit Jethro's tomb, known as Nebi Shu'eib. Overlooking the Kineret, Druze gather there until this day to discuss communal affairs (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Society_&_Culture/druze.html)
Anyhow, back to our verse, which finishes והיית לנו לעינים. Rashi interprets this to be in the future tense, meaning something like "If anything should be hidden from our eyes, you shall enlighten us."
This reading expands on the idea of inter-religious harmony detailed above, but goes a step further. True, Moses says, we follow a particular way of life which you may not follow, however you are still a great teacher and a religious man that we can learn from.
The belief that revelation is a zero-sum game, that my group has it all and yours has none, leads to a dangerous kind of fundamentalism, self-imposed segregation and violence that we see more and more of everyday, in all corners of the world. The interaction between Moses and Yitro show that there is another way - mutual respect and admiration can win the day.
This does not neccesarily mean that we are all one big happy family - Yitro returns home in the end. His true place is among his own people, in his homeland, and not living as a Jew.
If we can only look at it the right way, perhaps the very same religious understandings that so often drive us apart can provide exactly the kind of elevated consciousness that will one day bring peace to this troubled land.