Our portion includes the Ten Commandments. Yet it takes its name from the Midianite father-in-law of Moses, Yitro. He arrives to see Moses teaching Torah and judging the Jewish people, singlehandedly. Yitro has the wisdom to understand that this is a recipe for disaster and he emcourages Moses to democratize the process of spreading and implementing the new way of life of Israel, based on the Torah.

 

But there is a problem with this scenario. The story of Yitro’s visit and his contribution to Israel is written before the story of the giving of the Torah. So which came first? Our Sages debated the point. But one camp insisted that the Torah does not necessarily tell its teachings and stories in chronological order – “ein muqdam u-m’uhar ba-Torah.”

 

If that is the case here, and Yitro’s story is told first, but really occurred after the giving of the Torah, the question is – why? What important message did the Torah wish to convey through this editorial choice?

 

Tosafot (Avodah Zarah 24b, s.v. Yitro) suggest a profound answer. They explain that the previous portion ended with the story of Amaleq’s attempt to destroy Israel. We might have been tempted to conclude from that story that the whole non-Jewish world is out to get us. Therefore the Torah immediately balances the Amaleq story with the story of a righteous gentile whose wisdom changed the course of Jewish history forever, for the better.

 

This lesson of balance and tolerance was deemed so important that the Torah’s narrative coherence was reversed for its sake.

 

Shabbat Shalom

Rabbi David Greenstein