OU TORAH A Nation of Leaders By Rabbi Sacks
This week’s parsha consists of two episodes that seem to be a study in contrasts. In the first, in chapter 18, Yitro, Moses’ father-in-law, a Midianite priest, gives Moses his first lesson in leadership. In the second, the prime mover is God himself who, at Mount Sinai, makes a covenant with the Israelites in an unprecedented and unrepeated epiphany. For the first and only time in history God appears to an entire people, making a covenant with them and giving them the world’s most famous brief code of ethics, the Ten Commandments.
What can there be in common between the practical advice of a Midianite and the timeless words of revelation itself?
This week’s parsha consists of two episodes that seem to be a study in contrasts. In the first, in chapter 18, Yitro, Moses’ father-in-law, a Midianite priest, gives Moses his first lesson in leadership. In the second, the prime mover is God himself who, at Mount Sinai, makes a covenant with the Israelites in an unprecedented and unrepeated epiphany. For the first and only time in history God appears to an entire people, making a covenant with them and giving them the world’s most famous brief code of ethics, the Ten Commandments.
What can there be in common between the practical advice of a Midianite and the timeless words of revelation itself?
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