“And Yisro, the minister of Midyan, heard everything that G-d did to Moshe and to Israel…”

What exactly was it that Yisro heard that motivated him to come to Moshe and thereby come close to Hashem?

Rashi says that Yisro heard about Krias Yam Suf and Milchemes Amalek, the splitting of the Sea and the war with Amelek.

On the surface, these two events seem very different in their potential to motivate Yisro. Krias Yam Suf was an astounding miracle that according to chazal manifested itself with the parting of the waters in every body and container of water at that time. As water split everywhere, nature was turned on its head. We can certainly see how this experience would have impacted Yisro to go to Moshe and join with the nation that had been the beneficiary of such a miracle.

On the other hand, Milchemes Amalek was a war between two nations. Certainly Bnei Yisrael was the underdog. Here was a slave nation newly liberated, being attacked by surprise, without provocation, by an opportunistic power bent on exploiting their powerful advantage against their weak opponent. That we were able to defeat Amalek on the battlefield was no doubt a miracle. However, it appears to be one on a completely different scale. In every war there is a winner and a loser, and sometimes the weaker side prevails due to, what at least appears to be, strategy on their part or mistakes on the other side. What about Milchemes Amalek impacted Yisro in a way that could be compared to krias yam suf?

I heard this question originally from HaGaon HaRav Eliezer Plachinsky tz’l of Yerushalayim, who recently passed away. He explained that Krias Yam Suf alone was enough to win over Yisro to the belief in one G-d. To hear of such a miracle done to liberate a persecuted people from their tormentors was sufficient to change Yisro‘s belief system. In fact, after hearing of Krias Yam Suf, he had no doubts or questions of faith; who could question the undeniable truth that was borne out of Krias Yam Suf?

When Yisro heard about Milchemes Amalek, he was astounded!  He thought that no nation could be adversarial toward Am Yisroel after Krias Yam Suf. But now he saw that it was not so. Amalek heard of Krias Yam Suf and they still attacked Am Yisrael. Then he reasoned, “If people could hear of Krias Yam Suf, and still attack Bnei Yisrael, then I cannot merely rely on the inspiration I received from hearing – I must go to Moshe and learn from him directly. Milchemes Amalek revealed a weakness in what Yisro had otherwise thought was the incontrovertible message of Krias Yam Suf.    

We learn from here, as Yisro did, the imperative to make the time and exert the effort to learn directly from Talmedei Chachomim, and not to rely on our accumulated knowledge.

The Yalkut Yehudah answers the question using the same structure, but teaching a different point. When Yisro heard of the great miracle of Krias Yam Suf, he was compelled to answer an implicit question: Granting that G-d limits miracles, why did Hashem have to make such an astounding miracle? Why couldn’t Hashem have just enabled Bnei Yisrael to have conventionally fought their way free of the Egyptians?

Answers Yisro, it must have been that for Bnei Yisrael to have taken up arms and defeated Egypt in battle, a miracle even greater than Krias Yam Suf would have needed to occur. The notion that a slave nation could summon the physical, mental, psychological, and emotional energy necessary to win a battle with the most powerful nation state in the world at that time was just too far beyond the pale. Splitting the sea, thereby enabling the Jewish nation to be rescued supernaturally, must have been the ‘smaller miracle’ given the circumstances.

Then Yisro heard about the war with Amalek. To his mind, this shattered his entire understanding of Krias Yam Suf. Milchemes Amalek showed him that the people were able to fight and win, to be sure with Hashem’s help, but still in a conventional manner.

This meant that such a miracle, namely the people fighting a traditional war and winning, was not so far fetched that it should be viewed as ‘too miraculous’. So now the question returns: Why did Hashem split the sea? Let them fight their way to freedom.

Yisro’s new understanding was that Hashem made an awesome miracle and split the sea because it would have been unseemly for Bnei Yisrael to have born arms against Egypt, for they had provided a refuge for us in our time of need long ago. Of course today they were murderers who had thrown our babies into the sea and now were coming after us to bring us back to awful bondage. But that does not negate the role they played in the time of Yosef, and the moral imperative upon us to bring that to bear in our actions with them. So better for Hashem to turn nature upside down and vanquish them than to require the Jewish nation to act violently, even in total self defense, against Egypt.

When Yisro realized this, he had to go to Moshe to learn. The miracle of the parting of the sea by itself did not move him. It was when he saw the underlying ethical excellence of the nation and their G-d that ‘forced’ the miracle to occur that he was won over.

As it was with Yisro, so it is with us and our Jewish brothers and sisters. We must carefully study and comprehend any Torah teachings that relate to ethics, and share these lessons intelligently with each other and with Jews who have not yet been blessed with opportunities for meaningful Torah learning. The Torah’s morality and sensitivity connects to the very essence of our neshamos, and calls us all to a quest to genuinely know and guard the entire Torah. That unique call is one we can all hear.

Shabbat Shalom.