Parshat Yitro 2/15/25

Yitro, Moses and the elders, James Tissot

(a dvar given at my local havurah on Shabbos morning)

So the big news in this week’s parsha is that the Israelites receive the Ten Commandments! God descends on Mt Sinai in sight of all the people with thunder and lightning, and shofar blasts, and the mountain quakes and spews fire and the people tremble, and then God delivers what are literally the greatest hits of monotheism, God’s topline message to humanity, the first thing (and sometimes the only thing) most people think of when they think of the Torah/Bible, Judaism, etc. Pretty big deal! And obviously stuff like do not kill, do not steal etc is pretty relevant to our political moment, from the US to Palestine. 

But I actually want to focus on a more boring part of the parsha- what happens just before Moshe and the Israelites approach Mt. Sinai. Moshe’s father-in-law Yitro comes to pay Moshe a visit and while he’s there, he sees Moshe working all by himself, from morning to night, to resolve all the religious, legal, moral disputes that have come up in the community.  “Moshe sat to judge the people,” and “the people stood around Moshe” all day, bringing their disputes and questions one by one for him to resolve.

Yitro is troubled and says to Moshe “what you are doing is not good. You will surely wear yourself out, you yourself and all the people that are with you, for this matter is too weighty for you; you will not be able to do it alone.” According to the plain meaning of the text, Yitro seems to be saying- this is an inefficient legal system, draining Moshe’s valuable time and energy. 

Yitro tells Moshe that rather than centralizing all the power in himself, he should find people of “truth and integrity” who “hate money”, i.e. who can’t be bribed, and to set up a judicial system with lower and higher courts, where the judges have to be guided by righteousness and free from corruption.

When I read this part of the parsha it was impossible not to think of Trump and the MAGA movement’s attempts to assert authoritarian power over our judiciary, to install corrupt cronies and oligarchs and undermine democratic foundations. According to Rashi, Yitro didn’t like that Moshe was “sitting like a king” and this “indicated a lack of respect for the Israelites, so Yitro reproved him for it, saying ‘why are you alone seated while everyone else stands?’” Yitro in some sense was critiquing hierarchy and power; the impulse was towards democratization.

Moshe follows his father in law’s advice, and sets up a judicial system. Then in the next verse, the Israelites begin to approach Mt Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments. I think it’s significant that the parsha unfolds in that order. Before they can receive the revelation from God about the meaning, the principles behind justice and holy righteousness, they have to have a system, built into their social structure, to be able to implement those principles, put them into practice. 

Movement lawyers will tell you correctly that our legal system isn’t holy in itself– it is currently set up to uphold and protect racial capitalism. At the same time, the law can be used as a tool for justice and liberation– to establish and expand the rights of the powerless and hold the powerful to account. Rashi’s commentary on the parsha suggests there is something holy in the work of law itself. He compares a judge’s work to the study of Torah and says that “any judge who judges a case honestly and correctly…[it is] as if he became a partner with God in the act of Creation.” 

I’ll admit I’m not fully satisfied by my own attempt to read a radical message into this part of the parsha. Yitro’s solution isn’t radical democracy by any means– Moshe gets the law and morality from God at Sinai and then teaches it to lower judges, who he himself appoints, and anything they can’t figure out will be appealed up to him to have the final say. Maybe it’s kind of Trumpy! I’m well aware that Christian nationalists can and likely do read this exact passage as justification for appointing reactionary judges, using the law to impose ‘Biblical values’ on everyone who isn’t a straight white cis Christian male.

But coming right before the revelation at Sinai, I think there’s something worth learning here. It’s not enough just to rely on an awe-inspiring moment of revelation to establish justice, or a prophetic voice. Justice takes more than that. Justice is found in the standards we set as a community, the institutions we build and maintain, the resilience we cultivate, the messy and patient work we do together to tease out how to apply our values on a case by case basis. That work might sound more boring than the flash and sparkle of the revelation at Sinai, but maybe there is no radical shortcut, and maybe Yitro’s injunction to Moshe is its own kind of revelation. And now more than ever, like Yitro said to Moshe, none of us can do it alone.