The Summary This summary is adapted from this week’s main Covenant & Conversation essay by Rabbi Sacks. In Yitro, Bnei Yisrael received the headlines – the Aseret Hadibrot. And now in Mishpatim, we get the details. The first law? The treatment of slaves. There are 613 commandments in the Torah. Why begin here? Why does Mishpatim – the first full…
In the House of Lords there is a special chamber used as, among other things, the place where new Peers are robed before their introduction into the House. When my predecessor Lord Jakobovits was introduced, the official robing him commented that he was the first Rabbi to be honoured in the Upper House. Lord Jakobovits replied, “No, I am the…
…of the argument. Given that we do not say the Ten Commandments during public prayer, should we none the less give them special honour when we read them from the Torah, whether on Shavuot or in the weeks of parshat Yitro andVaetchanan? Should we stand when they are being read? Maimonides found himself involved in a controversy over this question. Someone wrote…
…already his leadership was being challenged. It was a taste of things to come. Realising that his intervention the previous day had already become known, Moses escapes from Egypt and finds refuge in Midian where his true identity is unknown. Yitro’s daughters, whom he rescued from rough treatment at the hands of local shepherds, tell their father that “An Egyptian…
…and had then taken refuge with Yitro and the Midianites. Relative to Aaron, Moses, his younger brother, was also an outsider. Yet God says, “He will be glad to see you.” Aaron’s ability to rejoice in his brother’s rise to greatness is particularly striking when set against the entire biblical history of the relationship between brothers thus far. It has…
The revelation at Mount Sinai – the central episode not only of the parsha of Yitro, but of Judaism as a whole – was unique in the religious history of humankind. Other faiths (Christianity and Islam) have claimed to be religions of revelation, but in both cases the revelation of which they spoke was to an individual (“the son of…
…intervenes. In Midian, when he sees shepherds abusing the daughters of Yitro, he intervenes. Moses, an Israelite brought up as an Egyptian, could have avoided each of these confrontations, yet he did not. He is the supreme case of one who says: when I see wrong, if no one else is prepared to act, I will. At the heart of…
…help him find meat? Clearly not. Either it would appear by a miracle or it would not appear at all. Did he need them to share the burdens of leadership? The answer is again, No. Already, not long before, on the advice of his father-in-law Yitro, he had created an infrastructure of delegation. Yitro had said this: ‘What you are…
…Torah of non-Israelite Priests (for example Yitro, Moshe’ father-in-law, was a Midianite Priest). The Priesthood was not unique to Israel, and in all places it was an elite group. However, here for the first time, we find a code of holiness directed to the people as a whole. This is a radical and new idea the Torah brings to the…
…to destroy the people, (after the Golden Calf and the episode of the spies). At the end of our parsha, He sent a plague against them. There were other devoted and religious peoples in the ancient world. The Torah calls Malkizedek, Abraham’s contemporary, “a Priest of God most high.” (Bereishit 14:18). Yitro, Moshe’s father-in-law, was a Midianite Priest who gave…