Finding Your Place in Jewish Destiny - Tehila Gimpel (Parsha Yitro): The Land of Israel Fellowship

hi everyone so we always know and talk about how the Torah portions seem to speak to whatever we need to hear right when we need to hear it now in this past week's portion we hear about the Revelation at Mount siai but before the portion gets to that there's this story of yro of Jethro a lot of people try to figure out why do we need to hear about his judicial reform that he's teaching Moshe before receiving the Torah but I want to go a step back and ask an even earlier question the portion starts by telling us that hro brings back Tora and moshe's Sons gaman elazer now there are a bunch of weird things here first of all we didn't even know they ever left last we saw them was in the hotel on the way back to Egypt so apparently we're finding out now they left at some point and then the ter the Torah tells us not only their names but goes through the trouble of mentioning the meaning and reason behind their names which is both repetitive in the case of G mha's older son because we already knew the reason for his name and it's also seemingly out of place usually names are explained at Birth it seems Superfluous now as well like why why are their names even important to tell us that they brought them we could just say brought moshe's Sons I think that to understand this you have to try for a moment to get into the mindset of the family drama that's going on here when Moshe leaves his father-in-law he doesn't tell him the full story honestly we don't know if he ever gave him a full story about the reasons that he ended up in Mion to begin with he just says to yro uh I want to go back to Egypt and check on my brothers see how they're doing now at some point seora goes back to her parents house and takes the kids with her now imagine what kind of conversation was happening between seora and her dad it's like H you remember Moshe so he heard God it turns out and uh he wants to go to Pharaoh he thinks he's going to bring down the world's most powerful Empire and save the Jews oh yeah what do you think you thr is thinking my son-in-law is a family is is a mental patient he I'm going to have to raise my grandsons as my own children that's like the likely scenario right you can then imagine just like this sad family tragedy and he's raising these children and one day he sits with the newspaper in the morning and he sees Moses leads Jews out of Egypt you know Pharaoh dies at Sea and now imagine he's sitting there and he's looking down at these two grandsons sitting on his lap one is named gam which means Stranger in a Strange Land and one is named elazar which means God saved me from the hands of pharaoh now he's looking down at these boys if you had to put the entire Exodus story in a nutshell it basically is We Were Strangers in a strange land and Hashem saved us from the hands of parro he's looking down at these little grandsons named I was a Stranger in a Strange Land and Hashem saved me from Far pharaoh and then these are stories that like we tell and retell through every generation Hashem We Were Strangers in Strange Land so we have to be kind to strangers Hashem saved us from the hands of pharaoh so we have countless reminders and garments and holidays and Shabbat to remind us that Hashem saved us from Pharaoh so he's looking down to these grandsons and he SE sees in them that he is you know these children he was Raising as like patriotic midianites are actually part of a grand historic story of Jewish Redemption and suddenly he realizes yeah you know maybe they have a good life here in midan they can pretend to be midianites they can try to fit in but they can't really Escape that they're not just individuals but part of something larger now what is marvelous about the Torah and Jewish Destiny is that every person lives Liv and relives and in their life every part of the Torah in our own personal lives we all have moments of slavery feeling foreign feeling strange in moments where Hashem lifts us out and we feel like we were saved the Torah every single story in the Torah is applicable to every person as a microcosm of the greater story inside their own personal life just like every cell in your body you know has the DNA of the entire body it functions on its own but it's also it has everything in coded like in the DNA inside of it but it's also part of this larger body and so utro comes and says these guys can't keep growing up in Midian they are part of the Jewish story yeah maybe the Jewish story isn't perfect you maybe those Jews can use some tweaking of their legal system but he realizes where his grandsons belong and he steps out and returns them and the Torah is telling this to us because you cannot live your life completely without attaching yourself to the Jewish story as it unfolds if you are a Jew you cannot be separate from the Jewish story you know normally in a war people run away in Israel I think we're probably the only country that in a state of War actually increases demand for Aliah the Jewish agency just reported that since the war started there was a 94% increase for Aliah request in America 147% in Canada 380 per in France and other places as well what in the world would drive people to run to a war zone with bombs falling and people hiding in shelters why now if you look down at yourself and your children you say am I actually going to sit here and let the story unfold without me the Jewish people were Strangers In a Strange Land in osht in Iraq in Ethiopia in the in in the Soviet Union Hashem took us out of those strange lands and saved us and brought us to Israel and I'm going to sit somewhere else now what's interesting is that Israel doesn't just put them on a train and send them by watching the Jewish story he as a gentile is also inspired he is inspired to question the idol olous teachings that he grew up with he starts asking questions and he finds a way to attach himself to help the Jewish people to enrich them with his knowledge and his life experience and to give to them and we know that in later generations the Traditions tell us that yel will come from him and save the Jews from cisra entirely so he is able to then also stand up alongside the Jewish people and make a mark for us in our history so when we look at this beginning of the paraa of utro it's not a distraction from the Redemption process it seems like it's you know you know we have leaving Egypt and then we should go straight to getting the Torah it's not a distraction it's not like the Torah lost track of time and just got off you know went off on a tangent the Torah is telling us that an integral part of the Redemption process that will repeat itself in future generations and we need to know for future Generations an integral part of that is that people who at one time felt that they were just separate individuals living comfortably wherever they are are going to see the Jewish Story look down at themselves and see that they are part of a larger story and cannot continue to be separate from that and that is something that we that the Torah makes sure that we need to know before we can actually come to Hari and have the completion of this process of really leaving Egypt and becoming the Jewish people there needs to be this rejoining of everyone together and everyone realizing that they cannot be separate from the most incredible Story Ever Told so with that I wish us all a good week of living out the Torah in our own personal lives and joining our lives to the greater miracle that is the Redemption of Amy style bye guys