‫בס"ד‬
Parshas Yisro:
Did Yisro Have an “Attitude Problem”?
Moreinu V’Rabeinu HaRav Michel Twerski, shlit”a; recorded on Jan 24, 2006
A Little Background
According to the majority of
commentaries, Yisro was a ger tzedek,
an authentic, righteous convert, in the
fullest sense.
I saw a ksav yad of Medresh
Cheifetz quoted that Yisro was the
progenitor of three families, one of
which was righteous gentiles. For
example, the Keinim that Shaul
advised to separate from Amalek were
not geirei tzedek but people who were
friendly to B’nai Yisroel and apparently
had some status of Yisroel. One family
was reshaim and the third was
tzadikim who became members of the
Sanhedrin. We see he did go back to
convert them but was only successful
in one part of the family.
One of the motivational forces
behind Kayin’s jealousy of his brother,
in addition to the rejection of his
korban, was that Kayin was born with
a twin sister while Hevel was born with
two sisters. In essence, Hevel had two
wives as opposed to Kayin since they
were intended to marry their sisters
for the sake of building the world. By
killing Hevel, he was denied his wives.
The Arizal tells us that Moshe
was a partial reincarnation of Hevel
and Yisro was the reincarnation of
Kayin. In order to somehow rectify his
actions, Kayin/Yisro had to provide
Moshe with Tziporah as his wife. There
are all kinds of gematrias that point to
this reincarnation.
We find that Yisro’s name was
originally Yeser, without the letter vov.
The vov that was added was the letter
Hashem had placed on Kayin’s
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forehead. After Hashem informed
Kayin of his punishment, namely
wandering, he protested that he would
be vulnerable to attacks of the animals
and Hashem put a letter vov on his
forehead to protect him.
How Did Yisro Contact Moshe
In the beginning of the parsha,
the verse (Shemos 18:5-6) says:
“Yisro, the father-in-law of Moshe, his
children and his wife came to Moshe,
to the desert where he was camped
near the mountain of G-d. He said to
Moshe, ‘I, your father in law, Yisro
have come to you. Your wife and her
two children are with her’”.
Now, Yisro couldn’t have been
the one who told Moshe since Moshe
had not yet gone out to greet him. It
must be that this message was
communicated indirectly.
The Medrashim (Rabba Shemos,
27:2 and others) bring two opinions,
one of which Rashi mentions, as to
what the medium was. The first, that
of R’ Yehoshua, is that Yisro sent a
messenger who conveyed “I, your
father-in- law, Yisro”. The second
opinion, that of R’ Eliezer, says that he
wrote him a letter informing Moshe of
his arrival. When the pasuk says
“vayomer el Moshe”, “and he said to
Moshe”, it was really by written
message.
The question is: what difference
does it make? Left to our own devices,
we would come up with one of those
two things. “And he said to Moshe, ‘I,
your father in law, Yisro have come to
you with your wife and your children’”.
He was really saying, “I have come to
be converted and I wonder if you’ll
accept it”. That really was his main
objective.
As Rashi (on pasuk 6) quotes
Chazal that Yisro was saying, “If you
won’t accept me for my sake, accept
me for your wife’s sake and for the
sake of her children”. (It may be in the
Medrash that what he was saying was
“you had nothing to do with raising
these kids. They’re her children. She
was there but you weren’t there.
They’re her children”.)
Krias Yam Suf and Amalek
The parsha begins with
“vayishma Yisro” (18:1), “and Yisro
heard”. There are different opinions in
the Gemora (Zevachim 116a), yet
Rashi quotes only two of them,
namely, the splitting of the sea and
the war with Amalek. I have said in the
past that because of these two events,
Yisro felt he had a very good chance of
not being rejected for the following
reason.
Interestingly, the splitting of the
sea and the war with Amalek stand in
stark contrast to each other, in a very
significant way. At the sea, G-d did
everything. He split the waters, the
Egyptians came in and he brought the
waters down and they drowned. By
Amalek, G-d could have done some
pretty nifty little tricks, but he chose
not to. Instead, he said, “you have to
go out and take the sword and you
have to fight them”. The question is, if
Klal Yisroel could fight, why didn’t they
fight the Egyptians?
They didn’t fight the Egyptians
because it would have been an act of
ingratitude. After everything was said
and done, Egypt had been their home
and a refuge in a time of famine. And
for the first hundred and some years
they were good hosts. It was only the
last eighty years that became rancid.
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G-d did not tell them to turn on their
pursuers because it would have been
kofui tovah and one of the most
important achievements in our middos
is that we should be makir tovah, that
we should be appreciative and grateful
to recognize the good that people
have done to us. The expression in
Talmud is “the well from which you
have drunk you shall not throw stones
in”.
Inasmuch as he heard these two
things, had he not heard about Amalek
he would have said, “Well, the reason
that G-d had to drown the Egyptians
was because Jews are incapable of
fighting”. He would not have known
anything about the concept of hakoras
hatov. It’s only those two things
together, kriyas yam suf and the war
with Amalek. After hearing about
Amalek, he said to himself, “they could
fight but they didn’t fight the
Egyptians. They didn’t fight out of
hakoras hatov. If there is this great
appreciation for the kindness which
was extended to them, then I can
safely come and not be rejected
because I was hospitable to Moshe”.
Yisro’s Understanding of Prophecy
We see in this debate an
additional aspect. Ultimately, the
foundation that Torah is built on
begins with the premise that man is
worthy of being the recipient of a
divine connection to the point where
G-d communicates to man and
through man. The quintessential
example of that is Moshe Rabeynu; he
is the one in whose voice people
discern G-d’s voice. Man can be worthy
of being the bearer of the divine
message.
An opposing view would say
man is unworthy. Man can be virtuous
and can achieve great distinction in
the sight of G-d, but man cannot be,
because he is inherently somehow
flawed, the beneficiary of G-d’s word.
Accordingly, G-d’s word would have to
appear in a form where it was clear,
for example, the luchos. The first
luchos were the writing of G-d on some
celestial material. When anybody
looked at it there was no mistaking the
fact that it was G-d’s script; there was
everything. This was miraculous
writing. The inside of the letters mem
and samech were suspended in midair.
It was written in such a way that the
letters penetrated the luchos through
and through, but nonetheless
whichever side you looked at the
luchos from, the letters still read in
order.
You can argue from whatever
philosophical base, from original sin to
whatever you want, that man is
somehow not worthy. Yisro believed
you can only trust that which is
written. He wrote Moshe a message,
“ani”, “Moshe, I’m writing you this
message. “I, Yisro, your father-in-law,
have come to you. I’m writing it. I’m
putting it in an envelope. I’m sealing it.
When you get it, that’s how you’ll
know that it’s authentic, that it’s me”.
Thereby implying that the only way in
which one can trust the divine
communication would be if it arrives in
the clearly divine script.
The other opinion in the
Medrash says that Yisro’s
understanding was beyond that, that
Yisro sent him a messenger speaking
in his name saying, “I, your father-in-
law Yisro have come to you”. In that
representation, he was really saying, “I
understand that you could be such a
messenger in speaking in G-d’s name,
‘that I G-d command you to such and
such”.
I don’t think that our sages are
worried about such a technical thing
over here. How did he do it? Did he do
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it this way? Did he do it that way? Our
sages are telling us that we are to look
at how Yisro delivered this message
and understand something about
where he was philosophically. One saw
him in a place where he says “I’m
really impressed with what happened
over here. There were lots of miracles.
But if there’s going to be a Torah it’s
only going to be trustworthy if it
comes in G-d’s script. It must be
evident. Man is not worthy of being a
bearer of prophesy”. Whereas, the
other opinion is saying that Yisro was
much further along and is saying, “I
trust the fact that man can speak in G-
d’s name”.
A Lesson in Sensitivity
The pasuk says (18:9),
“vayichad Yisro”, “And Yisro rejoiced
over all of the good which Hashem had
done unto Israel that he had saved
them from Egypt”. On the words
“vayichad Yisro”, Rashi quotes Chazal
(Sanhedrin 94a): “‫נעשה בשרו חדודין‬
‫חדודין‬, naaseh b’saro chadudim
chadudim, that his flesh became filled
with goose-bumps because he was
distraught over the destruction of
Egypt”. Even though he was happy on
one level, at the same time he was
distressed. Rashi continues, “This is
why we say not to insult a non-Jew in
the company of one who has a convert
in his family, even ten generation
ago”. Don’t be insensitive to someone
who has been Jewish for ten
generations, but that far back there
was a non-Jew. Despite the fact that
Yisro recognizes that the Egyptians
persecuted Klal Yisroel mercilessly and
he sees the hand of G-d in everything
that is taking place, but as much as he
rejoices over the justice of the
destruction over Egypt and the
appearance of the G-d of the universe
in the affairs of man, it still troubles
him that Egypt was destroyed.
 Our sages are trying to draw our
attention to the fact that conversion is
not without some predicate from that
person’s past. If we have somebody
that converts from, for example,
Catholicism, and becomes Jewish, they
recognize that as they were growing
up they were being fed a lot of stuff
that didn’t make any sense and which
was absurd. Nonetheless, if they look
at the fact that their parents were faith
driven, they can separate that
message out.
Similarly, sometimes parents of
new Baalei Teshuva will come in and
they’re very, very angry about the fact
that their children are acting in such
an obnoxious way, that they are so
rigid and uncooperative. They
complain, “Why did they need todo
this anyway?” On many occasions I
have reminded them that their kids
became Ba’alei Teshuvah because of
them. There was something about the
way that they raised these kids, a
certain integrity and inquiry, a
yearning. Something got transmitted.
I’ve said to the parents in many
instances, “I don’t know what you
want. You know, you’re responsible for
this. You’re behind this.”
I think in part that even though
there’s this sensitivity of not being
contemptuous of the non-Jewish
background in this person’s life or at
least being respectful of it so as not to
be offensive is because this person
does have somewhere, someplace,
some depth which begins in their past
and one should not be dismissive or
disrespectful of it.
There are two messages here.
One is, exceeding the extent to which
we are required to be very, very alert
and sensitive to where people are
coming from. There can be very
remote points of reference and
nonetheless, we have to be careful not
to trip over these sensitivities and be
offensive.
The second idea is that if
contempt of an idolatrous family past
were legitimate, then even though it
may offend the convert now, it still
would not be viewed so critically by
Chazal, because denouncing anything
contrary to Torah may have merit.
But I think that Chazal are
telling us to be careful even of that
because even though the background
may be one of idolatry or what have
you, nonetheless there was something
in that background which contributed
to the person getting there and
therefore one should not be
contemptuous of it.

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This D’var Torah was transcribed from a recording of an informal discussion

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