Rabbi Andrea’s Sermon 7th February / 20th Sh’vat 5786

UNDERSTANDING JETHRO

There is a popular anecdote, often attributed to Rabbi Elijah Benamozegh of Livorno: One day, on his way to the synagogue, he was stopped by an atheist. “Rabbi,” the man said, “I’ve read the Bible, and I found it full of nonsense.” Benamozegh paused and replied: “Of course. The Bible contains everything: poetry for poets, philosophy for philosophers, theology for believers, history for historians… and for fools like you - only nonsense.”

It’s one of my favourite jokes. And yet, it raises a serious question: is the Bible a history book? This is not a trivial issue because we are speaking about a sacred text. If, God forbid, this sacred book contains things that are inaccurate, someone might argue that perhaps everything else is inaccurate too, including the claim that God exists. And then - oy, oy, oy!

A case in point is this week’s parasha, which opens with Jethro. The Torah says: “Now Jethro… heard of all that God had done for Moses, and for Israel His people, how that the LORD had brought Israel out of Egypt.” (Exodus 18:1). And then the narrative goes on. Yethro comes to Moses, bringing Tzipporah and their two sons. Moses tells him the story of the Exodus; Yethro rejoices, blesses God, and shares a sacrificial meal with Moses, Aaron, and the elders.

But what exactly did Yethro “hear”? The verse speaks generally, but suppose we want to know better, specifically: what specific report moved him to come? On a straightforward, chronological reading of the narrative, Yethro’s approach to the Israelites and to Moses is due to having heard about the miracles: the plagues, the Exodus, the splitting of the sea, the defeat of Amalek, etc. In other words, Yethro has seen God’s interventions in history on the side of the weakest (the Israelites, fugitive slaves).

The narrative then continues (and the phrasing matters): “And it came to pass on the morrow” (Exodus 18:13) (וַיְהִי מִמָּחֳרָת) Jethro watches Moses judging disputes from morning to evening and warns him that this cannot last. Jethro is described earlier in the same chapter as “the priest of Midian” (kohen Midyan, - כֹהֵן מִדְיָן) (Exodus 18:1). In Ancient Middle East, priests served their States more than their religion. So, in other words, Yethro is an expert in administration, a public servant. And he explains to Moses that Moses cannot be involved in all disputes; Moses must delegate. Jethro urges Moses to appoint capable, honest judges in a clear hierarchy, so that justice becomes sustainable and only the hardest cases reach Moses. And Moses accepts the advice, establishing the first Jewish legal system.

On a plain reading of the text, let me repeat it again: all of this happens before the Revelation on Sinai.

But things are not so simple because, in Moses’ own explanation of what he is doing, the Torah uses a loaded phrase. Moses says that when cases come to him, he judges and “makes known the statutes of God and His teachings”: אֶת־חֻקֵּי הָאֱלֹהִים וְאֶת־תּוֹרֹתָיו  (Exodus 18:16).

Those “statutes” are (חֻקִּים - chukkim), often understood as decrees not immediately self-evident. And when the Torah turns to civil case-law, it calls it (מִשְׁפָּטִים  - mishpatim), and it does so explicitly at the opening of next week’s parashah, Mishpatim: “Now these are the ordinances (ha-mishpatim)…” (Exodus 21:1). These are the kinds of legal questions a society brings to court: labour and servitude, damages and liability, theft and restitution, loans and deposits, and more (see, for example, Exodus 21–22).

So how can Moses already be teaching “God’s chukkim and torot” if, according to the plain reading of the text, the Torah has not yet been given? There is a problem of chronology here! And we can solve this problem only by assuming that our chapter is not in chronological order: that the “day after” in which Jethro observes Moses at work is one of the days after the Revelation at Sinai after, that is, the Israelites have received the Torah.

This is indeed the majority of opinions. Jethro has heard all that God has done for the Israelites (remember, that was the first verse), and what Jethro has heard is not only the miracles; the Exodus, the plagues, the splitting of the sea, and so on. No: Jethro’s admiration for the Israelites stems from having heard that they have a legal system - the Torah - based on justice and compassion; a God who has forgiven the Israelites even after the terrible sin of the Golden Calf. And the Torah places the account of the judicial reform promoted by Yethro here, at this point of the narrative, for thematic reasons.

Certainly, we can now say it openly: it’s not a transgression. On the contrary, it is the opinion of many respected Rabbis and commentators, to state that the Bible is not a history book.

To summarise: if we read the episode as happened before Matan Torah (the “straight” narrative flow), Jethro becomes the model of religious imagination that responds to the miraculous: plagues, Exodus, the sea, survival, victory, history itself as revelation. If we read it as happened after Matan Torah, we are making a different theological claim: Yethro is not only impressed by wonders; he is persuaded by a moral-legal revolution; Torah becoming visible as a society of justice, delegated authority, accountability, and even the possibility of pardon and repair. Here the magnet is not spectacle but governance and ethics.

Both opinions are kosher. [1]

But we need to widen the lens, as one of my favourite commentators, Ibn Ezra, suggests. Jethro matters because he is the opposite of Amalek. Just at the end of last week’s parasha we read: “Then came Amalek, and fought with Israel in Rephidim.” (Exodus 17:8).

Amalek, encountered there, embodies fierce hatred of the Jewish people: hatred so raw that the Torah does not even pause to supply a “reason”; we simply learn that Amalek wants to destroy us. The Torah sketches that “Amalek-behaviour” in painfully concrete ways. The Amalek tribe strike the vulnerable, not the strong; the Amalek tribe “feared not God” (Deuteronomy 25:17–18), turning war into a theology of cruelty They attack without provocation, at Israel’s weakest moment (Exodus 17:8). They aim at erasing the Israelites, not defeating (Exodus 17:14).

So Amalek is not just “an enemy.” Amalek is a pattern: opportunistic violence against the weak, unprovoked assault, moral callousness, and a desire to erase rather than argue. Amalek becomes the name for hatred that is not a theological or political disagreement with Jews or Zionists, it is the refusal to let the Jews exist.

And so the Torah sets up a striking polarity: the gentile, (can I say goy?), who hates us to the point of annihilation, and the gentile who is moved by what he hears of Israel’s God and Israel’s way of life. Ibn Ezra makes this literary point explicitly: “Since Scripture has just mentioned the evil which Amalek did… it must mention in contrast the good advice which Jethro gave.” (Ibn Ezra on Exodus 18:1).

It is no longer so important to determine when Jethro met Moses. And, up to a point, it is not even decisive to pin down why Jethro came: whether he was moved by awe at miracles, by God’s saving power in history, or by respect for a moral and legal tradition, for the ability to preserve continuity and identity while resisting assimilation. What matters is that Jethro came into our camp: to show solidarity, to be of help, to strengthen a community that was tired and under pressure. And that, especially now, is what makes all the difference.

Because we are living in a time when “Amalek-like” hatred returns, sometimes disguised as politics. Think of those demonstrators who last week stood by the iron fence outside the UK Parliament, holding a large black banner with a slogan that not so long ago might have been the trademark of the National Front: “End Zionism control of UK politics, break the alliance with Israel.” They were waving, strangely enough, a Palestinian flag. But “Zionism control” is not a concrete critique of a government policy: it is a classic conspiratorial trope, the idea of hidden “Zionist”, and, all too easily, “Jewish”, control of institutions and political life.  And this is not an isolated case. We are living through a period in which news headlines are repeatedly used to “confirm” antisemitic stereotypes. We see it today in the discourse around Jeffrey Epstein: online he is casually labelled a “Zionist,” and even a “Mossad agent”; claims circulated as if they were self-evident, regardless of the reality behind them. Netanyahu had already, in July 2019, [https://www.timesofisrael.com/epstein-case-oozes-into-israeli-political-mud-as-netanyahu-barak-trade-barbs/], denounced Jeffrey Epstein’s involvement in Israel’s domestic politics.

In the same atmosphere, political rivalries and fragments of reporting are quickly reshaped into grand narratives about hidden Jewish power and “Zionist influence,” as though one scandal could serve as proof of an entire worldview.

Who Amalek is today is tragically clear. And there are plenty of them.

But that is not a reason to ignore the Jethros, far more numerous, who stand with us, often out of genuine admiration for our culture and tradition. We see them leaving flowers and lighting candles outside our synagogue; we see them joining pro-Israel demonstrations; we see them choosing solidarity when it would be easier to stay silent.

And we must be grateful.

[1] The Rabbis noticed that the placement of Yethro’s arrival is not self-evident, and the Gemara records an explicit dispute: one view places the Yitro episode before Matan Torah, and one places it after (TB Zevachim 116a). Among the “before Matan Torah” readers, Ramban (Nachmanides) is the classic voice for taking Exodus 18 in its plain narrative sequence. By contrast, the best-known “after Matan Torah” approach is Rashi: on “vayehi mimacharat / the next day” (Exod. 18:13) he identifies that “next day” as the day after Yom Kippur, and treats the unit as not written in chronological order—i.e., placed here thematically but occurring later in time. It seems to me that Sephardi and Reform commentators seem to have a preference for the former, while the latter view is accepted by many Ashkenazi and Orthodox. But you must study both!