The Purpose of Our Existence - Lidrosh Elokim, To Seek Out God

 Parshat Yitro

by Rabbi Avi Billet

It’s the day after Yisro has arrived, and Moshe sits down to judge the people. R Hirsch writes: 

“These and the following verses teach us of our forefathers’ way of life during their 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. Their food was provided for them each day by the fall of the Manna, and their other needs were also provided for (see Devarim 8:4, 29:4-5 and 2:7). Thus, meeting their basic needs was simple and easy, and did not take up much of their time. They were not engaged most of the day in those activities – labor, trade, household chores – that normally occupy the life of a people. In what, then, were they engaged most of the time? They would come to Moshe, or – as we will now her – to the men who acted as his deputies, “to seek God” (or perhaps judgment). לדרש א-לקים means: to seek instruction and help from God. It encompasses all the ways in which we are to seek God in all our activities in life and lot, ways in which we must persist if God is indeed to be our God. 

 Thus, the words of the prophet דרשוני וחיו (Amos 5:4) express the most comprehensive demand that God makes of man. To be included among דורשי ה׳ (those who seek God) is a distinction to aspire to, the mission that evolves upon us from the onset of maturity until the return of our souls to their Source. 

 “To seek God” expresses the exhilarating truth that if we seek instruction and help from God, we will find God himself, and our transient lives, with their small, trifling concerns, will be conducted in His presence. Then God will dwell in our midst, and our whole existence will find favor before Him. (See 25:8 and commentary) 

 The years of their wandering through the wilderness were indeed the great training for the Jewish people. The task of the Jewish people through all the centuries to come would be to spread the knowledge of Torah among all classes of the people. Here, “the people stood around Moshe from morning until evening” (v. 13). Their purpose: “The people come to me לדרש א-לקים (to seek God)” (v. 15) ”

Moshe explains that when people have a dispute, they bring it to Moshe who judges the merits of each side, reaches a conclusion, teaching them the law of God and His teachings 

“If they have a matter about which they require instruction or assistance, they come to me and I judge: In addition, I have to adjudicate their disputes. These are two senses of “seeking God” – in special cases about special matters. Finally והודעתי: They come to me to learn God’s laws and teachings. This is the general sense of “seeking God.” God’s help depends on the shaping of our lives in accordance with His Will and this shaping depends on the knowledge of His Will. 

 The חוקים (statutes) express God’s will regarding our active lives, which they limit within the bounds of what is permissible. His Will as regards our inner lives, the life of the spirit and soul, is contained in תורותיו, His teachings, which implant within us the seeds of truth and goodness (see Bereshit 16:5 and 26:5 and commentary). 

 Even before the Lawgiving on Sinai, they already had laws: the seven Noachide laws, Milah, Shabbos. These – דינין and עריות – required detailed and complex explanation and instruction.”

 The general message here is that even prior to the “giving of the Torah” the people are in need of instruction, and Moshe is the one who provides it. But even more than that, the people are aware that they are coming לדרוש א-לקים. 

 Yisro understands the importance of this role that Moshe plays, and thus even as he tells Moshe that Moshe will burn out if he doesn’t delegate from his responsibilities to others, Yisro nonetheless knows there are some things that CANNOT be delegated. There is no one who is qualified for some things that will have to remain within Moshe’s wheelhouse alone. 

On verse 19, Rav Hirsch explains: 

You have to be opposite the people, i.e. be the people’s representative before God: when they seek instruction and assistance from God through you, you bring their concerns to God. This function cannot be performed by anyone but you. 

His role remains to inspire, to be that go-between to God, and to provide the kind of guidance and instruction that no one else is qualified or able to provide. Yisro tells him והזהרהתה you shall warn the people, and Rav Hirsch translates it to mean, using a connection between הזהר and the word זהר – meaning light -

 הזהיר, then, denotes throwing light onto something for someone which otherwise he would not have seen or noticed. Hence also the double accusative: to cause rays of light to fall on an object, and to cause these rays to reach the eyes of man. 

In our verse, והזהרתה means: to cause the statutes and the teaching to shine clearly and brightly before their eyes. Make the statutes and teaching so important in the people’s eyes that they guard themselves against transgressing them…. This devolves upon you alone: You shall inform them of the negative commands. 

 But it goes even further than that. 

Because the reality is that these are a people who have neglected certain aspects of moral instruction in their time in Egypt. Yes – they kept certain practices and followed certain precautionary restrictions in terms of intermarriage and licentiousness. But they were idolators. They were steeped in Egyptian culture. They need to wean themselves off of things that will spiritually bring them down as they are the ways of Egypt. 

And one important aspect of weaning away from Egypt is weaning into what is the ideal culture of the Jewish people. 

And it is LOOKING OUT FOR OTHERS. 

 When Moshe is told about the דרך he is to teach the people to follow, Moshe is being told the following: 

Teach them the way in which they are to go in securing their livelihood and well-being. Ordinarily, people seek only their own welfare. In the case of the people of Israel, however, not only are they to act with lovingkindness toward one another, but this lovingkindness is to be their purpose in seeking their own welfare. Everyone is to look out for himself, only for the sake of his neighbor. Moreover, acting benevolently toward others takes precedence over safeguarding one’s own life (for example, visiting the sick, even if there is danger of infection) and upholding one’s own prestige (such as tending to the dead and their interment without regard to one’s position or age). 

 A person who has not received the radiant light of the Torah’s instruction will take the goal of his דרך, of his way through life, to be strictly his own benefit and his own welfare. When you enlighten him, he will realize that his existence and livelihood on earth are none other than for the sake of others; he will seek the דרך to his own existence through acts of Chesed, and through self-sacrifice will pursue this דרך and devote himself to it with every fiber of his being. 

 Likewise, clarify to them, the duties between man and his fellow man - (אשר יעשון) what is incumbent upon them to do. The ordinary standard by which a person measures his dealings with his fellow man looks upon these dealings from a purely objective standpoint; at best, they are conducted according to the standard of strict justice. A person forgets, however, that his actions may be strictly fair and correct, and the other party may have no right to demand anything else from him, yet for his own sake, considering the worth of his own moral personality and due to the mission of love and self-sacrifice devolving upon his personality, he may be obligated to act differently and do more - לפנים משורת הדין. One must go beyond the strict requirements of the law and renounce one’s right. 

 This is the opening through which גמילות חסד enter into the sphere of strict justice. A judge may not demand this of a person, but every seeker of justice should demand it of himself. Yisro thinks that this teaching, too, concerning the highest level of our moral and social obligation must come from Moshe himself. 

 If this event occurred, as we presume it did, before the giving of the Torah, it is all the more understandable that “the way in which they are to go” and “the deeds they are to do“ refer primarily to general human obligations.” 

Rav Hirsch, and the Torah, are NOT SAYING that everyone must BE the same. That is not the way God created the world. In fact, it is saying that we are to respect others DESPITE our differences. This, then, is where Yisro’s instruction to Moshe was so important. 

 He knew very well that dividing responsibilities would make things easier for Moshe, but in a sense, it adjusted Moshe’s responsibility in the sense that while his time would not be thoroughly consumed every day with judging ALL the cases, he now would have the responsibility to assure that moral instruction, that only HE was qualified to oversee, would come across through the tolerance that he would train in others to appreciate and celebrate. 

The Talmud tells us in Sanhedrin 38a, כשם שאין פרצופיהם שוות אין דעתם שוות. Just as their faces are not the same, their ways of thinking are not the same. 

 That is the story of the Jewish people. What unites us, however, is God, the Torah, and our shared commitment to serve Him and to be there for one another. 

May we merit to remember our place in God’s vision for us as instructed through His Torah and through Moshe Rabbenu, and may our community always grow in the direction of tolerance for different views and respect for others on account of our national commonality.