Parashat Yitro

Yitro 5768/2008

This week’s parsha contains the so-called ‘Ten Commandments’. In Hebrew, we use the term ‘Aseret Hadibrot’, ‘The Ten Pronouncements’ or ‘Statements’ from the word ‘d-b-r’, to ‘speak’.
The first of the ten is most definitely a statement. It states simply that the commandments to follow are Divine in origin; the Power that brought the Jewish people out of slavery is now setting out the requirements for a just society. No person can abrogate these duties. They are the basis for a moral life.

The philosopher Hermann Cohen introduced the term ‘Ethical Monotheism’, describing the Jewish idea that morality is not relative but that it is eternal and universal. Because each person’s perception of reality is limited by experience and education, humans are not in the position to determine right and wrong without a superior guiding force. Cohen sees morality as the mediator between the realm of nature and the realm of human freedom. The Aseret Hadibrot are the basic code of that moral order.

 These 120 Hebrew words have exercised enormous influence over the Western world. Rabbinic tradition sees in them all of the 613 commandments; Christianity took them to be the code of acceptable behaviour. In both faiths, the revelation at Mt Sinai was the ultimate experience of the Jewish people and Aseret Hadibrot were the content of that revelatory experience. They are the words by which we can relive and give expression to Divine revelation.

Yitro 5767/2007
This week's Parsha is taken from the Book of Exodus and is called 'Yitro'.

Yitro (Jethro), Moses' father-in-law, brings Moses' wife and children from Midian to meet the Jewish people in the wilderness, after their dramatic escape from Egypt. He also brings wisdom, guiding Moses as to the best way of leading his unruly horde. Magnificently, the Torah finds a parallel between the common-sense wisdom of Yitro and Divine wisdom.

In the same parsha, we read of the Revelation at Sinai and the text of the Ten Commandments. The parsha opens with the wisdom that is gleaned from life experience and concludes with wisdom that we cannot acquire alone. No matter how great Moses was, he was in need of human guidance; and Divine wisdom was revealed to each and every person present at Sinai, irrespective of learning or experience.