Baruch Hashem: Yitros Wake-up Call - Tehila Gimpel (Parsha Yitro): The Land of Israel Fellowship

so in this coming portion of utro we see one of the most Jewish famous well-known phrases make its first debut in the Torah and of all places it comes out of the mouth of Jethro who is actually an idolatrous priest in Midian in his previous career now he comes to this encampment after hearing the news of the splitting of the sea and in chapter 18 verse 10 it says and Jethro said praised be God and in Hebrew what does it sayem you guys can't right H it's hard to even imagine Jewish life without saying hasem and it's amazing that the first time that we say blessed is Hashem bar Hashem the first time we see that is from the mouth of someone coming from the outside it didn't start as an original Jewish idea but it actually came from moshe's midianite father-in-law now we know that the portion of yro is really special because it has Revelation it has the you know the giving of the tablets at Sinai now if the Torah put off telling us about the Revelation in order to dedicate all of these verses to talking about Moshe meeting up with his father-in-law there must be really important messages here something that we need to know in order to prepare ourselves for Revelation right so there's something going on here and I want to try to unpack it using two interesting passages in the sages that the sages bring in the tud relating to this verse so the first one is kind of shocking it's in tractate Sanhedrin in the Babylonian talmud on page 94 it says Rabbi papayas said this verse the verse that we just read about about Jethro coming and praising Hashem is actually in disgrace of Israel for behold there were 600 people there and not a single one of them stood up to say bar hasem until Jethro came and blessed Hashem as it is stated in that verse well that's a pretty damning statement considering that they just sang a really really long song at the sea thanking Hashem right guys that's a little bit odd so what's going on here so I'm going to put that question aside for a second and go look at a different passage that refers to Jeth and then I'm going to try to bring everything together okay so in Jewish law I'm sure you know that there are many blessings that we say we have blessings on food and blessings for doing mitzvot and blessings for things that happen to us and blessings for things that we see and most of these blessings are laid out in the oral tradition in the tractate known as bra Blessings Now I'm sure that many of you guys know this and I've said it a million times but it's good to review our oral tradition was passed down from generation to generation but it was codified in writing for the first time in the mishna in what is known as the tanic period which is the end of the second temple through about the year one uh 200 now the mishna is a compilation of all of the laws passed down in the Jewish tradition then you have the talmud the talmud is a comp basically a compilation of the discussions discussions trying to understand the mishna over the next 300 years meaning the the the in the tantic period the rabbis thought they were making things really clear by laying it all out in the mishna and then the Jews spent the next 300 years arguing over what the mishna meant and so the tall mood is the compilation of all of those arguments trying to understand what the mishna meant okay so now in the mishna in the tractate of blessings there's this whole list of blessings all different blessings that we make in many different situations and in chapter nine we see a whole list of blessings that you make when you see something like You Name It We bless it okay you name it and we bless Hashem for it there's a blessing for lightning there's a blessing if you see a river there's a blessing if you see an ocean there's a blessing if you see a desert there's a blessing if you see a windstorm there's a lot of blessings I'll say to keep this Fellowship short I will say there are a lot of blessings okay and one of them one of the blessings listed in chapter nine is that you make a blessing when you see a place where a miracle happened now what's really interesting is that when the talmud comes to review this list and try to understand it they actually only struggle with one blessing out of all of the blessings of the things that you say for things that you see meaning it is obvious to them why you make a blessing when you see lightning or an ocean they don't even it's just like duh of course you make a blessing the only one that the Tama thinks is kind of strange and says wait wait wait wait wait why do we actually have to say that Braha is when they comment on the part of the mishna where it says that you need to make a blessing in a place where a miracle happened so in the talmud in BR page 54 it says from where are these words derived meaning how do you know that you need to say a Braha that you need to say a blessing when you see a place where a miracle happening not happening like right where a miracle happened Rabbi yanan said as the verse States and then it refers to our chapter schot Exodus 18:10 Andro said blessed is HEM hasem who has saved you so meaning the ton says that from that we learn that when there is a miracle we make a blessing now this is sort of interesting the t is trying to understand why we need to thank Hashem why do we need to bless Hashem for miracles and the talmud sources this back to Jethro right here in our portion the whole thing is wild because the sages have no trouble swallowing the pill they have no trouble drinking the Kool-Aid for that like that the random things that we would just call nature you need to make a blessing and thank Hashem but thanking Hashem for a miracle that's surprising that needs to be explained that's the one that should be obvious it's blessing Hashem for the day-to-day mundane things that you know they're just natural they're in the world Rivers exist in the world the ocean exists in the world they're very beautiful but they're just part of nature like it should be obvious that if you bless Hashem for creating nature then surely when Hashem Breaks the Rules of Nature you should bless him right and then the tud references yro it says oh Jethro came and said barash and everyone in the tal is like oh okay that explains it carry on that is a strange talmudic passage right guys so here's the thing you know how in Sesame Street they would sing the song like one of these things is not like the other one of these things just doesn't belong and you have to figure out which one doesn't belong so that's sort of how it is here when you look at the general purpose of all of these blessings that we say all the time it seems like what are they trying to do to us like what emotional posture are they trying to put us in to me it seems like they're trying to awaken us to the fact that things that seem natural are actually Miracles don't live in the Consciousness that the ocean is just it's just water it's just nature see in it the greatness of hashem's creation when you see lightning don't just see some electrical current don't chalk that up to Nature don't just ignore it appreciate appreciate that as the glory of Hashem so if you think about it like that telling people to make a blessing to thank Hashem for miracles kind of sticks out in the background of those other Blessings Now obviously you need to be taught to appreciate things in life that you could take for granted just nature but you need to be told those things are Miracles when Hashem gives you food we make a blessing because we have to realize we have to work on ourselves to realize that it's a miracle when Hashem makes a new fruit we make a blessing so we appreciate it we don't just pass by the whole point of the blessings is don't mistake things that happen around you as just being nothing just being as nature they might look they might look like nature but they're Miracles but do you really need to tell people that Miracles are miracles do you really need to work on yourself if like you've already gone to the trouble of noticing that a miracle happened do you really need to be ordered to bless Hashem for the miracle the whole point of the blessings is to help you realize the things that don't seem like Miracles are Miracles but when you know it's a miracle it's already there you don't need help you're already going to be if you're in that Consciousness you're already there so what I think the tall mood is asking actually makes sense when you think about it because because the why do you need to learn that Miracles are Miracles it's funny but the answer is actually a fantastic answer if you read it in the context of the verse of Jethro and in the context of the talmudic passage that I brought you earlier criticizing the Jewish people for forgetting to say bashem for forgetting to thank Hashem for crossing the sea because yro gets there and he says like oh my gosh bar Hashem blessed is Hashem that did you a miracle this is happening right after the splitting of the sea during the actual moment of the splitting of the sea everyone was singing and and Overjoyed it's easy to be thankful at a miracle at the moment that the miracle is happening but right after that it didn't even take a day and everyone was complaining and carrying on once they were out of the miracle they didn't actually show any gratitude whatsoever the sages are noticing something very profound in the verses how quickly they forgot their gratitude and it took yro coming in and saying hey hey guys Miracles are Miracles you need to be thankful for the miracle don't forget the miracle you're so busy trying to remember to find Hashem in the places where Hashem is hiding that you sometimes don't notice Hashem when he's in plain sight so he tells them guys don't forget barem bless hasem he reminds us that even when you're surrounded by non-stop Miracles you can lose sight of Hashem and yro is teaching us something so powerful he's saying that in order to be ready for Sinai we need to learn this term we need to learn to sayem blessed is Hashem every observant Jew uses that word now because it was such a powerful lesson in our vernacular that you can't even imagine a conversation without it so yes of course it's important to see Hashem in the small things and when you wake up in the morning say thank you Hashem but it's also to remember that there's a danger that you can also forget that just like I'll say it like this just like you can forget that nature is a miracle you can forget that a miracle isn't nature and you know that really spoke to me this week because what we experienced this week was nothing short of a miracle I went to bed on Tuesday night and my entire life as a Jew in Israel I don't think there was ever a period of time where I felt more like we were between our enemies chasing us on one side and the Sea on the other side just this feeling of hopelessness like between a rock and a hard place and then I woke up on Wednesday morning and let me tell you that press conference with with President Trump that that was not on my bingo card it was just like what we we felt like there was nowhere to go and in a moment all of the realm of our possibilities expanded so much the discourse completely changed like the public way of even talking about the problems here just went from one end to the other in a moment and so it's like in the week that we were reading about Hashem taking us from within our enemies taking us out of Egypt and bringing us you know to Freedom towards you know our journey to the land of Israel we have a modern day suggestion of removing our enemies from the land and returning them to Egypt like seriously you can't even make this stuff up we are so used to always going back to this same kind of feeling of like okay we're in another round more terrorism more rocket attacks but you know this time it was so painful because so many sacrificed and so many gave so much and so many gave their lives and their families and for what it seemed like really there's nowhere to go and then suddenly I woke up in the morning and the whole conversation had changed that was a manifest Miracle nothing short of a miracle can explain that to me no one saw this coming I didn't see it coming I didn't hear anyone else see it coming and at that moment I was just so Overjoyed when I woke up in the morning I actually made a pancake breakfast for the kids and here we even took a picture of it um but then you know you start to process and all the doubts and questions come well maybe this is just a political maneuver maybe it's a manipulation maybe the other countries won't agree after the initial shock you start trying to give things these like natural political explanations that we're used to and so I don't know what's going to happen out of all of this plan or what will you know come to fruition what won't but I know that in one moment in time everything that we thought was possible was like this and then it went and became like this like our realm of options and our realm of what could be just like the the the blinders were taken off of our eyes to see that there's so much more that we haven't even imagined and the fact that everything we've been told for so long was just this un changeable political reality for decades was just all flipped on his head in a moment that is a miracle and yro teaches us don't forget that Miracles are Miracles don't lose sight of that and we mustn't lose sight of that in these critical months ahead we have to remember to say blessed are you Hashem that has made us a miracle in this time and in this place so amen [Music]