How come our parasha, that tells about the giving of the Tora, is named after Yitro? in what sense is he involved in this event? Reb Zadok has a surprising answer.
The Midrash on our parasha explains the different names of Yitro, Moshe’s father in-law. Upon this multitude of names, the Midrash expands:
Seven names were given to Yitro and they are:[…]Yeter (extra), meaning that he added a superfluous parasha in the Torah (Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishmael, Yitro 1).
Going against the classical assumption that there isn’t even one superfluous letter in the Torah, our Midrash is not afraid to claim that an entire parasha is superfluous. Moreover, our version of the Midrash, going against other variants, assumes that the superfluous text’s borders are not determined, and it threatens to expand so much - to the extent that the superfluous should be greater than the essential. Could it be that the Torah (תורה) itself is named after the superfluous (ייתור)?
Conversely, the Midrash Rabbah (Shemot Rabbah 27, 9) interprets Yitro’s addition in its simplistic sense: it relates to the appointment of Judges. According to Rabbi Zadok Hakohen of Lublin, we are not dealing here with a specific halachic issue whom Moshe forgot, rather with an addition separated for good reasons from the essence. Yitro brings to the people an external judicial system, one different from the one that Moshe wanted to establish. To be more precise: he brings specifically the system that Moshe did not want to establish:
Moshe Rabbenu did not want to appoint a Sanhedrin. […] He wanted to instill in them the way that all eyes should be illuminated, a way by which each individual should be able to see his own deficiencies himself. Each should have his own eyes and should not require the community’s eyes (עיני העדה). And this will be the illumination of the time to be, when “no longer will they need to teach one another”. (Takanat Hashavin 6. See also: Zidkat Hazadik 231, Pri Zadik Yitro 3. All three sources are quoted in the following).
A senior priest like Yitro does not entertain such an anarchistic possibility, a possibility where each individual goes by arbitrarily. He henceforth believes that Moshe is trying to establish a judicial system solely relying upon him and, thereby, recommends broadening this system by the delegation of authority. In reality, the result turns out to be that the individual’s eyes are replaced by those of the community, “for the Sanhedrin shall watch over all things” (ibid.). Yitro’s externality is displayed by this misunderstanding: the external individual assumes that the order should also be gained by an external mechanism, this being personified by the eyes watching over all. He cannot allow for things to simply run on their own.
Yet Yitro’s inadequate recommendation takes over Israel’s judicial system and rules it. At the same time, Reb Zadok’s drasha on the superfluousness of our text conquers new areas: “and therefore the Parasha of Matan Torah (the giving of the Torah) is named after Yitro. His name comes to signify the Parasha’s Yitour (superfluousness) for it is outside the Torah. Yet, isn’t Matan Torah the Torah’s essence? As mentioned, the superfluous conquers the essence and takes its place; the external infiltrates the inner depths. The Torah in all its grandness, in all its details and halachot, reveals itself as those very eyes whose role is to “watch over all things”, to penetrate and brighten every corner of existence through this dazzling light who demands for normativity and standardization. The Torah “written with ink upon vellum” is itself Yitro’s Torah, cloaks of leather - echoing the vellum - that envelope Israel and bind those very eyes whom Moshe wanted to enlighten: “he (Yitro) caused the eyes of Israel to be covered”. Yitro’s recommendation is not to be seen as only bringing a judicial system, rather it brings the very idea of legislation, a fixed set of laws regulating every person’s existence. Therefore, all the occurrences at Har Sinai in the Parasha’s continuation are only supporting the system that was created by Yitro.
Futhermore, although Yitro’s outlook is indeed bourgeois, he cannot be considered as a simple man who by chance replaces Moshe’s perception: “and thereby it (Matan Torah) was written in Parashat Yitro, for God created in this world a superfluous thing who should uphold the essence. For the Torah itself dresses in those levushim (superfluous clothing) and the converts only obtain those levushim.” Yitro’s conversion is not to be viewed in a sociological sense, one simply bringing in a certain mindset. Rather, it comes to represent the superfluousness existing in this world. Indeed, Israel longs for its utopia, a utopia of “a people that dwells apart, not reckoned among the nations” (Bamidbar 23:9), forming a unified nation who lives in and of itself, who looks upon itself solely through its own eyes. Yet, as long as this utopia is not materialized some consideration for the external suspicious look is due, and Israel cannot be immune to this gaze. For such is its way, it seeps deeply inside, breaking apart the inner unity and grateful tmimout (religious innocence). To Rebbi Zadok, the Goyim’s accusations against Israel are always personified as the neighbor’s gaze: a gaze who neither understands nor gives credit to our internal discourse. So too by Yitro’s gaze, who forms the discourse of comprehensive regulation, this discourse rapidly causes the Torah to wrap itself with those leather cloaks.
Now that we have revealed the very roots of this system, it should be asked of this “superfluous thing who upholds the essence”. From where did such a thing appear in our homogenous world? What is the source of this excess that attracts the foreign gaze, and who is then concealed by the levushim of the legal system? Here too does Reb Zadok comment radically. The Torah’s establishment, like all other systems, cultivates an elite who serves this very establishment and thereby project much prestige upon it. The superiority given to the Talmidei Chachamim over the Amei Ha’aretz (ignorant) is just another aspect of this superfluousness although Reb Zadok gives it a temporal reasoning:
Only this appearance of superiority (that of the Talmidei Chachamim over the Amei Ha’aretz) is required in this world, for God did agree with Yitro. For in this world, one requires another who is greater in wisdom (Chochmah). Only in the world to come is it said “No longer will they need to teach one another […]” (Jeremiah 31:33), meaning that even the Amei Ha’aretz’s concealed Devrei Torah shall appear. For in this world, there are secrets who cannot be revealed so that the people should not come to frivolity because of the yetzer hara (‘evil inclination’), and this is why it is stated that “one may not expound the laws of arayot (forbidden sexual relations) before three people” (Chagigah 2:1). Thereby, they are souls whose Devrei Torah are hidden, and they are cloaked (belevush) in this world as the Amei Ha’aretz. Yet, when the yetzer hara shall be cancelled all will be revealed, as is said “for they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them” (Jeremiah ibid.). (Zidkat Hazadik 231)
Here we see the associations between the different frameworks: the superiority and the regulation, articulated by the laws and leather cloaks, derive from the need to control the yetzer: the arayot must be concealed, and the buried secret existing in the Amei Ha’aretz’s vulgarity cannot be revealed. The superfluous and the excess originate in the yetzer: the eruption of the body that goes beyond itself, drags with it all the organs and succeeds in clouding the ‘eyes of consciousness’. The excess, the deviation from the conventional, the lawlessness, all these disrupt the harmonic balance that Moshe is trying to establish. His attempt now looks utopian, looking to go back to the days of peaceful nakedness in the Garden of Eden, a place where each organ had its harmonious place, not requiring any external gaze and without any breaches. Yet the eruption of the yetzer alarms this external gaze who demands for norms: some things cannot be looked at, they must be covered and controlled. This demands for an ever present regulating gaze, making sure that what cannot be looked has its proper levushim. The entire establishment revolves around this excess, and attempts to cloak it with multitudes of covers and levushim. It attempts to diffuse and take over this exploding excess through the formation of a well-regulated bureaucratic system, marking even the slightest thread that peaks outside the norms as a threat against it, even the needle in a haystack must be accounted for, disciplined and well regulated. And all this is just “a surplus superfluousness” that upholds the essence.
Yet, until the end of days, when the Gates of Torah shall open and reveal the secrets of arayot, when the leather cloaks shall be removed and the eyes of the Amei Ha’aretz shall return to their rightful unregulated owners, what is the use in this kind of discussion, and in Reb Zadok’s persistent occupation with those secrets that cannot be revealed? Maybe Reb Zadok desires to deal with this excess exploding from the yetzer in a different way. In his abundant writings on these topics, we see that his aim is not to control and conquer - regulating this unregulated excess through an external disciplinary system - but rather to allow for a broader thinking, which includes its excess. Rather than regulating it, he wishes to grant the excess with a meaning. If the serenity of Moshe’s anarchistic Torah is left a utopian dream will only materialize in the time to come. In the meantime one should try and live with this turmoil, allowing for the regulatory system and its disruptive excess.
