This week’s Torah commentary, written by Hebrew Seminary rabbinical student Dr. Cécile Bruriah Gonçalves, has been dedicated by Peggy Bagley in memory of Rabbi Dr. Douglas Goldhamer.
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To read Parashat Yitro today is to accept that the Torah does not merely recount an ancient episode but proposes a political theory capable of interrogating our contemporary institutions. Exodus 18 stages a centralized power, embodied by a charismatic leader, confronted with its own limits. Moses, a figure of uncontested authority, finds himself caught in a system where legitimacy rests on his person alone. The text shows that this configuration is not only ineffective; such reliance on one man alone is dangerous. It exhausts the leader, it exhausts the people, and it transforms justice into a bottleneck where dialogue can no longer take place. Exodus 18:13 thus describes a scene saturated by time and by the body: “וַיֵּ֥שֶׁב מֹשֶׁ֖ה לִשְׁפֹּ֣ט אֶת־הָעָ֑ם” (“Moses sat to adjudicate for the nation”) while “וַיַּעֲמֹ֤ד הָעָם֙ עַל־מֹשֶׁ֔ה מִן־הַבֹּ֖קֶר עַד־הָעָֽרֶב׃” (“the nation stood before Moses from the morning until the evening”).
The narrative opens in Exodus 18:1 with the arrival of Yitro, presented as “כֹהֵ֤ן מִדְיָן֙” (“a priest of Midian”). This detail is not incidental, for it signals that the critique that will follow comes from an external figure, not integrated into Israel’s internal system of legitimacy. Yitro may be Moses’ father-in-law, but Yitro comes from somewhere else. The text insists on this alterity to emphasize sharply that truth can emerge outside the circuits of an echo chamber. In midrashic literature, Yitro’s otherness is not erased; his foreignness enables access to a truth that the Israelites do not see among themselves. The early medieval rabbinic anthology Tanchuma Shemot (Yitro 1) depicts Yitro’s appearance in the community as the paradigm of an authentic approach:
מִי הוּא זֶה שֶׁבָּא וְנִתְגַּיֵּר וְהָיָה גֵּר שֶׁל אֱמֶת? זֶה יִתְרוֹ שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר וַיִּשְׁמַע יִתְרוֹ.
Is there anyone who has come, undergone conversion, and become a true convert? There is Yitro, for the text [of Exodus 18:1] says, “Yitro listened!”
Yitro is not a member of the people. He is not a prophet and even less a judge. Yet he is the one who diagnoses the institutional pathology. As Exodus 18:14 puts it:
וַיַּרְא֙ חֹתֵ֣ן מֹשֶׁ֔ה אֵ֛ת כׇּל־אֲשֶׁר־ה֥וּא עֹשֶׂ֖ה לָעָ֑ם
Moses’ father-in-law saw all that he was doing for the nation.
He sees what Moses does to the people, and he also sees what this manner of exercising power inflicts on both Moses and the people. Moses sits, the people stand, “from the morning until the evening,” in interminable waiting. In the same verse, Yitro inquires:
מַדּ֗וּעַ אַתָּ֤ה יוֹשֵׁב֙ לְבַדֶּ֔ךָ וְכׇל־הָעָ֛ם נִצָּ֥ב עָלֶ֖יךָ מִן־בֹּ֥קֶר עַד־עָֽרֶב׃
Why are you sitting alone and the whole nation standing over you from the morning until the evening?
The judicial apparatus demands somatic availability: to stand, to wait, to endure slowness, to withstand uncertainty. In other words, access to justice is filtered by each Israelite’s physical capacities. Those whose bodies cannot—those whose energy is limited, those who must work, and those who care for others—pay for access to judgment with disproportionate expenditure. What we now call ableism is recognized here as a structural given, not as an isolated prejudice. When Yitro declares to Moses in Exodus 18:17, “לֹא־טוֹב֙ הַדָּבָ֔ר אֲשֶׁ֥ר אַתָּ֖ה עֹשֶֽׂה׃” (“What you are doing is not good”), he is not formulating a technical remark, but a moral and political judgment on Moses’ exercise of power. Yitro tells Moses that his mode of government is intrinsically unjust, that it produces suffering, that it exhausts the people and exhausts him as well. The biblical text in no way seeks to attenuate the violence of this critique. The Torah does not relativize or contextualize this criticism. The text issues Yitro’s rebuke so it may witnessed in its political nakedness. The following verse makes this critique explicit: “נָבֹ֣ל תִּבֹּ֔ל גַּם־אַתָּ֕ה גַּם־הָעָ֥ם הַזֶּ֖ה” (“You will surely wear out both you and this people”). Rashi accentuates the somatic scope of the diagnosis by understanding that Yitro sees the people “כמישה,” (“as if they were withering”)—nearly signifying that the centralization of power is a form of structural exhaustion, an institutional violence that simultaneously affects the leader and those who are led. The Torah does not juxtapose good intention with bad intention; through Yitro, our text analyzes a system.
Yitro’s proposed reform does not center on making Moses more efficient; the proposal redistributes authority and institutes procedures. In Exodus 18:21, Yitro calls for instating publicly known individuals who are ethically minded: “אַנְשֵׁי־חַ֜יִל יִרְאֵ֧י אֱלֹהִ֛ים אַנְשֵׁ֥י אֱמֶ֖ת שֹׂ֣נְאֵי בָ֑צַע” (“God-fearing people of valor, people of truth who hate sabotage”). In the following verse, he stratifies the architecture, empowering the judges to be able at all times to judge for the whole nation. Yitro couches this reform, in Exodus 18:23, in the grander scheme of a system that can endure in the strongest terms possible: “וְיָֽכׇלְתָּ֖ עֲמֹ֑ד וְגַם֙ כׇּל־הָעָ֣ם הַזֶּ֔ה עַל־מְקֹמ֖וֹ יָבֹ֥א בְשָׁלֽוֹם׃” (“You will be able to stand, and this whole nation too will be able to arrive in peace in its own place”).
Yitro’s critique remains strikingly relevant today. Contemporary political systems, whether democratic, technocratic, or authoritarian, are traversed by the same ableist temptations—that legitimacy flows from status, from a diploma, from function, or from recognized expertise; and that only certain voices are authorized to speak. Contemporary political ableism manifests itself in the concentration of executive power, in the verticality of institutions, in the marginalization of non-conforming voices, in the sacralization of expertise at the expense of lived experience, and in the reduction of public debate to an exchange among institutionally recognized actors. Parashat Yitro offers a frontal critique of this logic. It affirms that legitimacy cannot be monopolized. It shows that external critique is indispensable to the political health of a people. The acceptance of this speech is described as an unqualified listening that wholly commits:
וַיִּשְׁמַ֥ע מֹשֶׁ֖ה לְק֣וֹל חֹתְנ֑וֹ וַיַּ֕עַשׂ כֹּ֖ל אֲשֶׁ֥ר אָמָֽר׃
Moses heard the voice of his father-in-law. He did all that he said. (Exodus 18:24.)
The rabbinic tradition fully perceived the subversive scope of this episode by making it an institutional foundation. Tanchuma Shemot (Yitro 1) indeed affirms that Yitro “הוֹסִיף פָּרָשָׁה בַּתּוֹרָה” (“added a section to the Torah”). This statement, of remarkable theological audacity, means that the Torah itself recognizes the normative value of an external voice. The model of pluralized justice is readable from the opening of Mishnah, Sanhedrin 1:1, which establishes collegiality as a minimal condition for certain judgments, such that “דִּינֵי מָמוֹנוֹת בִּשְׁלֹשָׁה” (“monetary cases require three judges”). Over time, Jewish law extended this principle by requiring courts and other groupings of officers in other aspects of life, such that justice would less and less depend on the judgement of a single person (Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Sanhedrin 1:1–4). In other words, tradition does not sacralize individual authority; it frames it through procedure, plurality, and ethical character.
Contemporary societies are marked by a crisis of confidence in institutions, by growing distrust toward political and administrative elites, and by a sense of exclusion felt by large segments of the population. This crisis is not merely sociological; it is structural. It stems from an ableist model of legitimacy, where only certain people are considered competent to make decisions, to interpret laws, and to govern. Parashat Yitro shows that this model is intrinsically unstable. It produces exhaustion, frustration, and injustice. It creates a gap between the governors and the governed.
Yitro’s teaching, instead, reassigns legitimacy expansively among more people. The delegation proposed by Yitro is not a simple administrative measure; it is a transformation of the relationship to power. It implies that authority cannot be concentrated, that competence cannot be monopolized, that truth cannot be confiscated. Yitro’s advising Moses demonstrates that institutions must welcome critique, including when it comes from the outside, and they must allow disabled voices to participate in the construction of the common good. Exodus 18:22 formulates this reform as an effective reduction of burden and not as a simple sharing of tasks: “וְהָקֵל֙ מֵֽעָלֶ֔יךָ וְנָשְׂא֖וּ אִתָּֽךְ׃” (“it will make things lighter for you, and they will uplift you”).
Parashat Yitro invites the reader to rethink the figure of the leader. Moses is not diminished by Yitro’s critique; Yitro grants endurance to Moses. The centralization of power is presented as, not a strength, but an institutional fragility. Just leadership is described as leadership capable of listening, of sharing authority, and of organizing plurality. Exodus 18:24 stages this listening without defensive justification; “וַיִּשְׁמַע מֹשֶׁה לְק֣וֹל חֹתְנ֑וֹ” (“Moses heard the voice of his father-in-law”).
Thus, to apply Yitro to today is to affirm that legitimacy must be rethought. It is to say that external critique is indispensable. It is to recognize that centralization is a form of institutional violence. It is to affirm that justice requires plurality. It is to recall that—at the heart of its own founding narrative—the Torah itself amplifies a voice from elsewhere to preach a form of government that is shareable, sustainable, and live-affirming.
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