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Home , Yitro (parashah)

18 February 2017 22 Shevat 5777 ends 6.08pm 6.14pm

Volume 29 No. 21 Yitro Artscroll p. 394 | Hertz p. 288 | Soncino p. 445

In memory of Yehuda ben Yaakov HaCohen

Malacky , Slovakia, built 1901

“I am the Lord, your God, who has taken you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of 1 slavery. You shall not recognise the gods of others in My presence" ( 20:2-3). Sidrah Summary: Yitro

1st Aliya () – Shemot 18:1-12 5th Aliya (Chamishi) – 19:7-19:19 Yitro, Moshe’s father in law and a Midianite The people agree to God’s offer. God tells Moshe priest, hears about the miraculous Exodus from to instruct the people to wash their clothing, Egypt. He comes to meet Moshe in the desert, refrain from marital relations () and not to together with his daughter (Moshe’s wife) encroach onto the mountain for the next three Tziporah and Moshe’s two sons. Moshe greets days. Moshe relays this to the nation. God’s Yitro and relates to him all that has happened to Presence descends on the mountain; there is the . Yitro and Moshe bring offerings thunder, lightning and shofar blasts; the mountain together. is wreathed in smoke. Question: What are the names of Moshe and 6th Aliya (Shishi) – 19:20-20:14 Tziporah’s sons? Answer on bottom of page 6. God ‘descends’ upon Mount Sinai and Moshe 2nd Aliya (Levi) – 18:13-23 ascends again. God once again tells Moshe to warn the people not to encroach onto According to Rashi’s commentary, the narrative the mountain. After Moshe descends, God now skips forward to the aftermath of the giving speaks the : 1. Faith in of the . Moshe is busy making halachic God’s existence 2. Prohibition of idol worship rulings from morning to evening. Concerned 3. Prohibition of swearing false oaths 4. Keeping about this being too much for Moshe, Yitro Shabbat 5. Honouring one’s parents; Prohibition advises him to set up an alternative system of of: 6. ; 7. Committing adultery; 8. Stealing; judges, presiding over groups and sub-groups. 9. Bearing false testimony; 10. Coveting what Only the major issues should be brought directly others have. to Moshe for his judgement. 7th Aliya (Shevi’i) – 20:15-23 3rd Aliya (Shlishi) – 18:24-27 Trembling from this awesome experience, the Moshe accepts Yitro’s advice and appoints people retreat and ask Moshe to be God’s judges over sub-groups of 1000, 100, 50 and conduit, instead of God speaking to them 10 men. Yitro returns to Midian. directly, lest they die. Moshe reassures them. 4th Aliya (Revi’i) – 19:1-6 God tells Moshe to warn the nation not to carve The narrative goes back to Rosh Chodesh Sivan, certain images (see Rashi). The commandment one and a half months after the Exodus, prior to is given to build a designated altar upon which the giving of the Torah. The people travel from offerings to God should be brought. Refidim and arrive in the Sinai Desert. Moshe ascends Mount Sinai. God tells Moshe to inform The Yeshaya sees a vision of the the people that if they listen to His voice and heavenly court, occupied by God and His . keep His covenant, they will become “a kingdom Whilst the angels assure Yeshaya that he is of priests and a holy nation”. personally free of sin, God tells him to warn the Point to Consider: why does the verse use the people of their eventual exile, due to their singular form of ‘encamped’ when describing the stubbornness and iniquities. The evil king Achaz ’ arrival opposite Mount Sinai (19:2)? (see ascends the throne; he will be shown Divine Rashi’s commentary). mercy in order to save his righteous son, the future king Chizkiyahu.

United Synagogue Daf Hashavua Produced by US Living & Learning together with the Rabbinical Council of the United Synagogue Editor: Chaim Gross Editor-in-Chief: Rabbi Baruch Davis Editorial Team: Ilana Epstein, Michael Laitner, Sharon Radley Available also via email US website www.theus.org.uk ©United Synagogue To sponsor Daf Hashavua please contact Loraine Young on 020 8343 5653, or [email protected] If you have any comments or questions regarding Daf Hashavua please email [email protected]

2 Solutions in the Sidrah: Changing Legal History by Rabbi Yoni Birnbaum, Hadley Wood Jewish Community

On 3 May 1980, Candy According to Rabbi Yerucham Levovitz (d. 1936), Lightner’s 13 year-old it was this key quality which enabled Yitro to daughter, Cari, was change Jewish legal history as well. Possessing tragically killed by a highly-developed investigative powers, Yitro had, drunken hit-and-run driver according to the , ‘tested’ the key tenets in Fair Oaks, California. of every contemporary pagan faith. Eventually he The 46 year-old driver had arrived at his own conclusion that was three previous convictions the right path. for driving whilst intoxicated and was on bail from a hit-and-run arrest just two days earlier. However, upon arriving at the site of the Jewish He left Cari's body at the side of the road and encampment in the desert, he observed that the fled the scene. legal system they currently employed was ineffective in delivering justice, as well as In response to the sudden and brutal loss of injurious to the health of their leader, Moshe her daughter, Candy set up an organisation (Shemot chapter 18). Applying his investigative called ‘Mothers Against Drunk Drivers’ (MADD), skills to this situation as well, Yitro advised determined to change public attitudes regarding Moshe to set up a cascading judicial system, drink driving and to push for tougher penalties with less complex cases to be brought before for offenders. Her persistent efforts eventually lower level judges and only the most important bore fruit. On 17 July 1984, the minimum legal ones to be brought before Moshe personally. age for drinking in the USA was changed to 21. This was the birth of the Beth Din judicial system. By 1997 the Department of Transport had committed to ending the use of the term As with Candy Lightner’s personal battle to ‘accident’ when referring to a drink driving change the law regarding drink driving offences incident, replacing it with ‘crash’, thereby in the 1980s, it was Yitro, although coming from indicating that the causes were ‘a choice, a a very different direction, whose personal talent violent crime and 100% preventable’. for identifying problems and providing solutions shaped the legal history of the Jewish people. When MADD was founded in 1980, an estimated 25,000 people were killed each year because of drink driving in the USA. By 2013, largely as a result of the efforts of the organisation Candy founded, that number had fallen to 10,076 – a 60% drop in the number of fatalities.

Candy Lightner is just one example of numerous, inspirational individuals who have changed the course of legal history through their determination to improve society. Whilst the factors that originally led them to take action vary considerably, they share the ability to critically investigate the current state of affairs and determine what key changes could be made to improve things. Candy Lightner 1980

In memory of Yochanan ben Moshe 3 Duty and Protection by Rabbi Sam Taylor, Community Rabbi, Western Marble Arch Synagogue

This week’s sidrah describes An alternative interpretation of this Midrash could the Jewish people arriving be derived from a verse in Shir HaShirim (the at Mount Sinai. The verse ) which states: “my dove is in the (Shemot 19:17) relates that clefts of a rock” (2:14). This verse is understood “they stood at the bottom of by (d. 137 CE) to be a parable of the the mountain”. Rashi (d. Giving of the Torah. The dove takes shelter and 1105) quotes a Midrash, rests in the overhang of a rock. The cleft is a safe which says that God ‘picked place for the dove; it can be free from predators up the mountain from its place and held it over and recuperate from the activities of the day. the Israelites like a barrel’. What does this Midrash mean? What message is it conveying? Before receiving the Torah, the Jews were We can suggest two approaches: standing in the desert in the summer month of Sivan. It must have been unbearably hot. God, The (Avodah Zara 2b) states that in the in His kindness, picked up the mountain and messianic future, the nations of the world will be provided the children of Israel with a canopy, with asked by God why they did not observe the shade and protection from the sun, which was Torah. They will answer that even though they did beating down brutally on them. Just as the dove not keep the Torah themselves, they should be is sheltered in the cleft of the rock, so the Jews rewarded for allowing the Jews to keep it. God were sheltered. This image teaches us that when will reject this answer, because the nations we accepted the Torah, God promised us shade, helped the Jews only for their own benefit, not protection and shelter. for ours. Understanding these two paradigms, that Torah The Talmud then says that the nations of the is both a duty and a protection, can help our world will retort by quoting our Midrash; the relationship with God to develop and flourish. mountain was held over our heads and God said: “if you accept the Torah, then it will be good for you; but if you don't, – there [i.e. at Sinai] you will die”. This indicates, the nations will claim, that the Jews only accepted the Torah because God threatened them; they had to accept it. The Talmud then defends the Jews, pointing out that during the Purim story they re-accepted the Torah out of love (Talmud Shabbat 88a). It seems clear that, according to the Talmud, ‘holding the mountain over us’ indicates a forced acceptance. What are we supposed to learn from this image? Perhaps the lesson is that we should take responsibilities regarding our faith with a strong sense of duty.

In memory of Mordechai Avraham ben Nechemia 4 Parallel Thinking Part 16: The Fabric of Reality 1 by Rabbi Dr. Moshe Freedman, New West End United Synagogue

The Rambam (, consisted of even smaller, fundamental parts d. 1204) proposed that the called quarks. Trying to understand what quarks study of science and the and electrons are made of is very challenging, natural world helps to bring even for scientists! a person to love and fear God. Understanding the For our purposes, imagine a snooker table; these nature of God’s creation of particles are represented by the different balls on a physical world is an the table. In varying circumstances, the balls essential scientific study for those who seek to could whizz around anywhere on the table; enhance their understanding of God. so too these particles could exist anywhere in the universe at any time. Physicists would From a scientific perspective, it is very hard to pin describe the ‘table’ as a ‘field’. The strength of down what physical things are actually made of. the field in positions where there are no balls is The ancient Greeks were the first to propose that low. In contrast, the strength where there is a ball all matter is made of fundamental, indivisible is high. Electrons and quarks (like the snooker building blocks. The idea probably originated with balls) are described by scientists in similar terms. the Greek philosopher Democritus, around 2,500 years ago. The word ‘atom’ comes from the Greek However, if those particles are always whizzing word atomos, which means indivisible. However, around at very high speed, they cannot come one of the most successful scientific endeavours together to form all of the physical things in the of the late 19th and early 20th century was the Universe. In the mid-1960s, Peter Higgs discovery that atoms consist of smaller particles – proposed the idea that there is a unique field protons, neutrons and electrons. which gives other particles mass by slowing them down below the speed of light. This would The model of the atom was refined by Danish be like someone pouring golden syrup all over scientist Niels Bohr (d. 1962), who described a the snooker table, which would slow the balls central nucleus comprised of protons and down so they could come together. The Higgs neutrons surrounded by orbiting electrons. field has the same effect. The dimensions of the atom are astonishingly small. Humans can see objects as small as The discovery of the Higgs Boson, dubbed ‘the 0.4 mm wide, roughly the diameter of a human God particle’ proved the existence of this field hair. The width of a human hair contains which explains how almost everything in the approximately 100,000 atoms, end to end! Universe is solid and stays still. While scientists Yet the relative distance between the nucleus do not currently know how these fields originate, and the orbiting electrons is vast. If we expanded the concept highlights Einstein’s famous remark the size of the nucleus to the size of a standard that reality really is an illusion, “albeit a very fishball, the electrons would be orbiting persistent one”. approximately five miles away. In other words, if that fishball was at the New West End , its electrons would be orbiting as far away as Golders Green United Synagogue! The rest of the atom is empty space, which means the vast majority of all physical objects is also empty space.

By the mid-20th century, scientists had discovered that these smaller building blocks

In memory of Yisrael Shmuel ben Yirmaya Yehoshuah 5 Insights into Jewish History Part 63: Drawing Battle Lines by Rebbetzen Ilana Epstein, Cockfosters & N Southgate United Synagogue; Head of Project Development, US Living & Learning

The fourth and fifth only one who was ritually pure was able to bring mishnayot of the first an offering. The utilised the people's chapter of diligent adherence to these laws, by decreeing (Ethics of the Fathers – see that going outside of Judea would cause one’s green , p.524) status to change from pure to impure. Even introduce us to the new entering the land of the Kutim (Samaritans) in leaders of the Sanhedrin modern day Shomron, which had always been (Jewish central court), Yossi part of biblical Israel, would render someone ben Yoezer and Yossi ben Yochanan. The first impure. The Sanhedrin hoped that this measure acted as the prince (Nasi), the public face of the would stop the common folk from joining Yosef Sanhedrin, the second was the halachic head ben Tuvia and his tax collectors outside of Judea. (Av Beit Din). This began the period known in Rabbinic literature as the ‘Zuggot’ (couples). Another new law had to do with the introduction These two men were the first ‘zug’. The most of glassware by the Hellenists to Judea. Though famous ‘zug’ of all, four generations later, was glass had been around for a very long time, it was Hillel and Shamai. only during the first century BCE that it started being used by the Hellenists to make utensils Yosef Ben Tuvia, a ruthless tax collector, had such as cups and plates. The Sanhedrin ruled emerged as a leader. His tax collection in the that if one who was in a state of ritual impurity province of Syria (modern day Israel, Jordan, touched a glass, and then passed it on to one Lebanon and Syria) attracted followers from the who was ritually pure, his/her status would sectarian movements. These movements wanted change. This rendered glass a conduit for ritual nothing to do with any Torah laws, Written or impurity. The Sanhedrin hoped that this would Oral, but were interested in forging a new life, keep the observant Jews from sharing meals with away from the rigours of halacha, and with a the Hellenised Jews. focus on material wealth.

They were opposed by the Sanhedrin, who stood defiantly against the ruthless pursuit of Hellenism and wealth. The battle lines were drawn as the two camps fought over the “amei ha’aretz” – the farmers and common folk.

As the battle was underway to influence this population group, the Sanhedrin had tradition on its side. We learn both from the Talmud and from the Letter of Aristeas that the laws of ritual purity were kept scrupulously by all the people in Jerusalem. Aristeas describes a scene in Jerusalem of people walking on different parts of the road, depending on their purity status, in order to not affect each other’s ritual purity. The

laws of purity and the status attached to them

may seem foreign to us today, but in Temple . son second their times these laws were stringently adhered to, as , called was son first Their Answer:

In memory of Miryam Frumit ben Shimon 6