The following is a brief summary of some of thoughts said over by R' Frand on the parsha Thursday evening (as I have been visiting in Israel with my family this is being blogged on Friday as the live shiur in the US would have been live here at 4AM). I have attempted to reproduce these vorts to the best of my ability. Any perceived inconsistency is the result of my efforts to transcribe the shiur and should not be attributed to R' Frand.
It is well known that Yisro was a Kohen Midyan and yet he gave up his stature to convert to Judaism. R' Frand asked - what made him tick? What caused him to convert?
The Ramban states that there is a machlokes about whether Yisro came before or after Matan Torah. The Ramban then asks - why does the Gemara (quoted by Rashi) state only that Yisro heard about Krias Yam Suf and the war with Amalek and not about Matan Torah? This was an incredible event - that Hashem spoke to 600,000 people at once, no one had ever been witness to this!
R' Frand quoted R' Elya Svei who quotes the famous Gemara in Sotah which discussed Pharaoh's plan to kill the Jews. The Gemara notes 3 people were involved with the plan - Yisro, Bilaam and Iyov. Iyov was quiet and was punished for this while Yisro ran away and as a result was zoche to have his grandchildren sit in the Sanhedrin.
R' Frand also quoted a Medrash on the words Hava Nischachma Lo in Shemos 1:10 wherein the Medrash notes that Pharaoh does not want to outsmart "them". Instead the Torah uses the words Lo - meaning him. Who is the him? Pharaoh wants to outsmart their G-d so that he wont punish them. They dont want to use sword because the punishment is always middah k'neged middah. They decided to use water, because they knew that Hashem had promised that He would never bring a flood again.
When Yisro leaves, he left with a question - how will Hashem punish the Egyptians? R' Elya believes that this ate away at Yisro until he heard about Krias Yam Suf. He saw that Hashem did not destroy the world with water, but He will wipe out some people with water. This is why the news of Krias Yam Suf was so motivating to him.
R' Elya said as part of shmooze to the boys in the Yeshiva - when you have a question and it eats away at you and then you find the answer - it will stay with you forever.
R' Elya also theorized that Moshe saw Yisro come into the "beis medrash" as a formed komer and say this is not right - because he saw that Moshe was exhausted. Moshe listened to Yisro because he saw that Yisro had lived the question and that it ate him up. Once Torah clicked for him, it made sense and what he said made sense to others. This is what made Yisro tick.
R' Frand also said a vort from R' Elya Boruch Finkel, who notes that when Yisro first saw Moshe, "he bowed" and then they went into the tent. But who bowed? And who asked the other Shalom? The Mechilta said that Moshe was the one that bowed and from here we learn that a person should have honor for his father in law.
But why do we need the rest of the pasuk (the bowing, embracing, etc) to teach that one should honor his father in law? The beginning of the pasuk says that Moshe went out to greet Yisro. Of course this was honor, he did not send an Uber to meet Yisro.
R' Frand quoted a Chizkuni who notes that the Maharal says that Yisro asked Moshe to come out for him and if not for him, then for his wife and children so that it looks like he is being honored. The Maharl asked - does Yisro need honor? He answers that a person does not need to be makpid on their kavod, but they do need to be makpid on their bizayon (degradation). This is because a person is in the form of Hashem. Thus going to get Yisro was a matter of not causing bizayon to Yisro, but not an honor. Thus the bowing is the extra step of honoring and this is the reason for the limud.
If you have seen this post being carried on another site, please feel free to click www.kosherbeers.blogspot.com to find other articles on the kosherbeers blogsite. Hey its free and you can push my counter numbers up!
No comments:
Post a Comment