Author’s note: By the Grace of God. Yithro. This Sabbath I was in hiding.
“Moses’ father-in-law, Jethro, sheik of Midian, heard about all that God had done for Moses and His people Israel, when He brought Israel out of Egypt.” (Exodus 18:1)
Rashi (ibid.) asks: “What was it that Jethro heard, that made him come to Moses? Jethro heard about the splitting of the Red Sea and the battle with Amalek.”
A well-known question, found in works of my father, of blessed memory, and in other sacred texts, asks what Rashi could have meant by asking, “What was it that Jethro heard?” The text itself states explicitly that he heard “about all that God had done for Moses and His people Israel when He brought Israel out of Egypt.” Why does Rashi answer that Jethro heard about the splitting of the sea and the battle with Amalek, instead of quoting what is written in the text?
We learn in the holy book Beit-Aharon that the fact that God gave the Torah to the Jewish people in the wilderness was of great significance. The Beit-Aharon’s teaching is in reference to Rashi’s explanation of the verse (Deut. 6:5) “You must Love God your Lord with all your heart.” Rashi (ibid.) explains: “Your heart should not be divided against God.” The Hebrew name for God used in this Rashi is HaMakom, which in this context is translated as “Omnipresent,” but normally translates as “Place.” The Beit Aharon explains Rashi as saying, “Your heart should not be divided against the place.”—that we must never say, “In this place I can worship God, but in another place it would not be possible.” Wherever we are, we must worship God.
If the Jewish people had received the Torah in their own land, the Land of Israel, they might have assumed that they could fulfill the commandments only in their own homes, and not when they were exiled and preoccupied with survival. This is why God gave them the Torah in the wilderness, while they were traveling and busy—so that they would know to keep the Torah everywhere, as we said above, “that your heart should not be divided against the place.”
It is therefore possible that Rashi, in questioning Jethro’s response, is asking: What specific thing did Jethro hear that made him leave his place “and come” to the wilderness? Why did he need to come at all? He might just as well have sat in his own home and sent a message to Moses, asking for a teacher to be sent to him, to proselytize and teach him Torah, just as later we see that Jethro himself returned to his home to convert his family to Judaism.
Now we can better understand Rashi’s answer, “Jethro heard about the splitting of the Red Sea and the battle with Amalek.” Amalek wanted, above all else, to cool the ardor of the Jews for their God. But how could he possibly have imagined being able to chill the enthusiasm of a people who had just witnessed the splitting of the Red Sea? The splitting of the Red Sea, the Talmud tells us, was a moment when even the lowliest, heathen maidservant saw visions of God not revealed to Ezekiel the prophet. But because the Jewish people were traveling, busy, and weary, Amalek thought that he might be victorious over them, God forbid, even though they had just enjoyed an apotheosis of spiritual revelation. This is why it is written (Deut. 25:17): “Remember what Amalek did to you on the road out from Egypt. Who chilled you on the road . . .”
Jethro said to himself, “If this is any indication of how things are, it will not be enough for me to receive the Torah in my own house. I must go out on the road, and receive the Torah there also, and only then will I be able to be a Jew in my home.”
This, then, is the meaning of Rashi’s remark, “He heard about the splitting of the Red Sea and the battle with Amalek.” When Jethro heard that even after the splitting of the sea there was still a battle to be fought with Amalek and that Amalek actually thought he could prevail against the Jews, Jethro realized that to become a Jew, one must leave home and be on the road, in the wilderness.