Parshat Yitro 

The regular public reading of Torah is first mentioned in the Book of Nehemiah, which is set at the beginning of the return to the land of Israel after the Babylonian exile. In the Talmud (Megillah 29b), we learn that the Jews who remained in Babylonia and the Jews who returned to Israel developed different customs about this practice. In Babylonia, the entire Torah was read on an annual cycle. It was divided into the 54 portions with which we are familiar. In Israel, the Torah was divided into smaller portions; it took three years to complete the cycle of reading the five books. As biblical scholars, including my friend Dr. Marc Brettler, have noted, this meant that our Torah portion this week, Yitro, would have been read over three consecutive weeks in the time of the Second Temple.

Because the encounter between Moses and his father-in-law precedes the focal point of this week’s Torah portion, the revelation at Sinai, most years most of us do not focus our attention upon the relevance that this encounter has for contemporary life. This year, I would like us to imagine ourselves living in the Second Temple period and hearing only the narrative of Exodus 18 this week, and focusing our attention, individually and communally, upon the reunion of Moses and his father-in-law, Yitro.

In the opening narrative in Exodus 18, Yitro asks Moses: What is this thing that you are doing to the people? “Why do you act alone while all the people stand about you from morning until evening?” (Verse 18:14). In verses 18:17 and 18, Yitro continues by saying: “What you are doing is not right! You will surely wear yourself out and these people as well. The task is too heavy for you; you cannot do it alone.”

In our Torah reading, Yitro criticizes Moses for taking total responsibility for communal leadership without even asking the people for a contribution. He teaches his son-in-law that the best thing for a communal leader to do is to delegate power and share both authority and responsibility.

Yitro’s admonition of Moses sets the stage for the readers, to hear the challenging imperative of Exodus 19 — that the Covenant and the responsibilities of Torah that will be revealed in Exodus 20 will be with the People Israel and each of us, and therefore we are entitled to the blessings that emanate from Torah. The rabbis over the ages through the medium of midrash have derived from the narrative of Parshat Yitro that all of us, be we Jews by birth or Jews by choice, were “present” at Sinai and affirmed with Moses and his generation that “ All that Adonai has spoken we will do!” ( Exodus 19:8)

The Yitro-Moses encounter reminds us that self-centeredness can emanate from even the most altruistic of leaders. Neither Moses’ good intentions to be the intermediary between God and the People, nor his willingness to be the arbitrator of disputes between the people, are healthy for him or the People.

What was true for Moses and the biblical editors who chose to include this narrative as an introduction to the Ten Commandments that are the core of Torah, is, I believe, an accurate description of the challenges and tensions faced by public and communal leaders and those whom we lead today, as it has been for every generation of humanity ever since Sinai.

Our best leaders are not those who do everything for their community or their nation but rather those who inspire us to both help ourselves and to join together to help others.

Yitro’s advice to Moses to share power and responsibility is a message that is certainly applicable to contemporary Jewish leaders, both lay and rabbinic, as well as to “We The People of The United States” as we approach our 250th anniversary of self-government. One of the key lessons I take from the overall narrative of the Books of Exodus and Numbers is that the building of an ethical, moral, and free society is an easily definable goal, but an awesome and at times seemingly impossible task that, as Yitro warns Moses, cannot be accomplished by one leader alone.

Contemporary leaders, both political and communal, face the same fundamental challenges that confronted Moses. The best of our leaders, similar to Moses, assume their responsibilities reluctantly. Like Moses, our communal leaders and our elected leaders, here in America, in Israel, and around the globe, have to deal with the challenges of both adornment and abhorrence. Their constituents have to recognize that those who lead us are, like each of us, imperfect and flawed.

Yitro’s advice to Moses, in the 13th century BCE, to find people willing to step forward and take on leadership roles in communal life, remains, I believe, the core challenge for us in the 21st century CE. Good people abdicating responsibility by taking an “it’s not my job” attitude while claiming the right to criticize and kvetch leaves power vacuums that are filled by people who seek leadership only for personal gain. On local, national, and global levels, the 21st century has seen too much power in too many places fall into too few hands, many of them belonging to people who are more selfish and self-centered than selfless. This year, I hear in the story of Yitro and Moses a call to us to both step forward and give our time and talent to the community and to choose political and communal leaders who ask themselves every day the questions posed by one of Moses’ descendants, a sage named Hillel, who taught us some 2000 years ago:

“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?”

On this Shabbat Yitro, I ask myself and each of you not only to commit to the straightforward challenge of Hillel’s teaching from Pirke Avot, but to go a step further and rephrase Hillel’s question and ask: If I try to do it all myself, who will be with me? If I am unwilling to share power and responsibility, what am I? And then to echo Hillel’s rhetorical retort, if not now, when?