Moshe is arguably the most significant person in the Torah, whose impact as a lawgiver, teacher, and savior has been felt worldwide by most major religions for over three millennia.
He was undoubtedly a brilliant and astute person whose measured thinking carried immense gravity. At a bare minimum, before any of the more expansive literature, the Torah’s plain text testifies that Moshe regularly spoke with God Himself and that he retained his sharpness and vigor until his very last breath.
Moshe had only just decisively rescued the Jewish People from Egypt and its formidable military. His newly liberated people had no government, so Moshe was the only person with the apparent authority to settle people’s disputes.
Morning till night, he would arbitrate and resolve problems. The trouble is, he quickly ran into a capacity problem; people were coming to him non-stop, and it was too much. He was exhausted!
So the Torah introduces Yisro, who tells Moshe that it simply can’t be correct for there to be one sole arbiter of justice for so many people! So Yisro advises Moshe to train some honest and competent men to share the burden, and they’d refer to Moshe any cases they could not resolve on their own. Moshe implements Yisro’s proposal, and the new organizational structure of the justice system proves to be a resounding success. Moshe is no longer stretched so thin, and Yisro goes on his way.
This story is almost funny to read – it just seems absurdly trivial!
Sure, we can say that Moshe believed he was required to teach everyone himself – וְהוֹדַעְתִּי אֶת־חֻקֵּי הָאֱלֹקים וְאֶת־תּוֹרֹתָיו – but he was limited by the same twenty-four hours in a day as anybody else who has walked the earth. Who hasn’t experienced a productivity bottleneck at some point in their lives? It is such a basic problem! Of course, anyone who’s been there recognizes that, however basic and common, it is still a serious problem. Yet as basic as the problem is, the Torah introduces Yisro, who proposes a solution that is equally basic and can be found in any book on business management or organizational strategy: to optimize workflow efficiency, the individual at capacity must delegate tasks, distribute that work for others to perform to reduce bottlenecks and improve throughput.
None of this is complicated or groundbreaking, yet it occupies a non-trivial amount of space in the Torah. Rashi says that Yisro’s very name alludes to the extra portion added to the Torah through his input and initiative. Could Moshe not figure out how to delegate effectively on his own? What is remotely remarkable about Yisro’s solution?
Perhaps the answer is what we sense – there is nothing remarkable about this conversation other than the fact of the conversation itself.
People speculate on the Torah’s political stances regarding capitalism, socialism, or what have you – but here, in the same section the Torah is given, the Torah quite plainly states that it is not exhaustive, that it doesn’t purport to contain every single kernel of wisdom that could ever exist.
Sure, it has a comprehensive framework covering the full spectrum of human experience. Still, it also leaves plenty of details for humans to figure out for themselves, in this instance, effective government. Yisro proposed an idea about improving Moshe’s administration, and the Torah explicitly takes a pragmatic approach; if it works – great!
The Ishbitzer suggests that when God tells us not to carve graven images or sculptures, it is essentially a commandment against rigidity. Rigidity almost assures self-destruction in the long run. As Charles Darwin said, it is not the strongest of species that survives, nor the most intelligent; it is the most adaptable to change.
While it might be intuitive to delegate tasks – that intuition still came from a human; it is not obvious that the Torah endorses and adapts to human intuition, which is what is so remarkable about Moshe’s problem and Yisro’s solution.
What’s more, the solution didn’t simply come from a human; it came from a Gentile! At a minimum, the Torah takes a nuanced view on Gentiles here – that Yisro is welcome; and his wisdom is welcome too. He correctly identifies a problem in Jewish society; he proposes a practical solution, and Moshe embraces and successfully implements his policy suggestions with God’s blessing. Aside from the pragmatic approach to government, this interaction is highly significant because, so far, almost every Gentile in the Torah has been one villain or another! Pharaoh, Egypt, Amalek, and perhaps Yishmael, Esau, Lavan, and Ephron.
Given the well-documented history, it is only too easy to generalize that Gentiles are not our friends – they only want to hurt us, they have nothing to offer, and we ought to keep our distance. This conclusion does not stretch the imagination, and it’s a safe bet that asks nothing of us. Trust nobody; everyone hates us!
But in this story, the Torah affirms that for all the enemies out there – however many and dangerous – we might also encounter allies along the way. The Ibn Ezra suggests that the Torah explicitly infers this lesson by introducing Yisro immediately after battling Amalek. In Yisro, we learn that not only do allies exist whom we ought to welcome, but there also exists the possibility that they bring experience, knowledge, or wisdom that we ought to welcome too.
To be sure, it is a minefield to navigate how to live with this, and you should seek guidance from a trusted advisor; because our culture is not their culture, and our values are not their values. But educated and experienced leaders with the maturity to appreciate nuance should recognize that the Torah plainly states that value can exist that originates outside the Torah and beyond our society from people who don’t come from the same places we do.
This bold thought shouldn’t be as threatening or radical as it may appear at first glance. Using the digital technology that went into writing this sentence so that you could then use the same technology to read it with, it’s something we should recognize is true. The Torah doesn’t tell humans about electricity or indoor plumbing. As R’ Shlomo Farhi notes, there is no religious imperative to reject something purely because it doesn’t originate from within the Torah’s culture. It’s something our sages understood long ago – חכמה בגוים תאמין. If it works – great!
Moshe was intelligent; he likely understood the value of delegating but still believed he had to do it all on his own until Yisro cautioned him otherwise. By reporting this banal conversation in such detail, it seems that the Torah embraces an element of flexibility or fluidity in how we navigate the dynamic environments we encounter in the world. Yisro probably didn’t innovate management science and delegation – that’s nothing we can’t figure out on our own. Perhaps the story’s conclusion is that we can figure things out on our own; we have the discretion to determine how to build and operate a society using the Torah’s guidelines.
When we encounter uncharted territory and unprecedented obstacles in our community and society, as we inevitably will, we have to remember that not only is figuring out the solution not against the Torah but figuring out the solution is the embodiment of the Torah’s highest ideals.
Staying alive in an ever-changing world requires flexibility and the ability to roll with the punches and modify your approach.
As the saying goes, the trees that flex in the wind survive, and the ones that do not bend will break.