Yitro: the Super-Inlaw

It's interesting how the actions of a person in a text influence how you visualize that person in your mind's eye. If a person is a magnanimous soul, I picture them as being physically big, strong, and robust! If they take a more subordinate role, I picture them as physically smaller. This is how artists in an earlier time, in the mists of history, pictured groups of people: the more important they were, the bigger they were. The less significant they were, the smaller they appeared. Just imagine the pictures of people swelling, larger or smaller, depending on their importance at any particular moment. If someone is important, they physically grow larger and taller. If they they take a subordinate role, they physically shrink. Form follows function, as they say.

That habit of mind persists in my own visualization of characters when reading the Torah, and this sort of visceral visualization impulse is what I used when creating characters for the Comic Book Siddur.

In the torah portion "Yitro", where Moses' father-in-law gives practical advice to Moses, I had a vision of Yitro being a very strong figure, towering over Moses. Here are some notes I'd written to myself while reading parsha Yitro: "Moses' father-in-law: note the influence of Yitro on Moses' interaction with God. Moses really doesn't interact directly with God alone. He has help from the counsel of Yitro. For example, in line 12 (refer to your Chumash!) Yitro shows Moses about protocol and decorum. It's Yitro who brings the burnt offering and the sacrifices to God. Yitro advices Moses to delegate. Lines 17-27 are amazing. They do away with the "Great Man" theory. God may have chosen Moses, but Yitro helped Moses in an incalculable way by coaching him."

After considering this passage, it becomes clear to me that Moses's talk with God is actually triangulated, for Yitro is in Moses' corner, giving Moses advice on leadership and decorum. Yitro really shines here as a magnanimous soul, for without Yitro at this juncture, Moses could have committed a faux pas. He could have done or said something inappropriate or ridiculous. Yitro explained to Moses how he must interact with God (with appropriate sacrifices), and how to lead the Israelite people (by delegating leadership). It's a testament to the father's-in-law, and it's an acknowlegement that our elders are a repository of wisdom.

It makes you wonder if God chose Moses for Yitro. In my mind's eye, I picture Yitro as tall, muscular, and strong, whereas Moses is less so, only because Moses (at this particular point in Exodus) lacked knowledge and insight in how to be most effective with God, and with the People -- until the appearance of Yitro. It also shows you how the generations really are bound together and are dependent on each other: Moses depends on Yitro for advice, and Yitro depends on Moses to listen to it: yet both are concerned with doing well for those outside of themselves: God and the People of Israel. I find Yitro a fascinating character, and I wish I knew more about him. (But at least you know how I think of him: as a guy who's generosity of spirit causes him to physically grow bigger, as if being inflated with a sort of spiritual gas!)