This week’s Torah portion is named after Yitro, Moses’s father-in-law. What made Yitro so meritorious to have a portion named after him, especially the one that contains the giving of our holy Torah?

The sages say that Yitro was unique. Although everyone in the world heard about the miracles that God performed for the Jewish people in Egypt – after all, there were national disasters every day, but they did not internalize the message. They did not stop to truly “listen” to what God was telling the world.

Yitro, however, did stop to listen to what God was saying; he internalized the message and made some serious changes. He recognized that God and the Jewish people have a very special relationship of which he wanted to be part of. It was through this act of listening, that Yitro was able to transform himself from a pagan priest to the become the father-in-law of the holiest prophet that will ever exist.

Lesson:

God sends us messages all the time. But are we attuned to stopping for a few moments of our busy lives and ask ourselves what does God want from us?

There is a story of a Rabbi’s wife who accidently spilled milk in front of her husband. The husband asked her, “Can you think of a reason that God made the milk spill?” The wife thought for a moment and said, “T wo weeks ago I forgot to pay the milk man!” While we may never know exactly what God is telling us, we need to internalize that that God is communicating with us all the time. It is incumbent upon us to try to discern the messages around us and use those messages to transform ourselves to become better people, just as Yitro did, and fulfill our highest, holiest potential.

Exercise: When something frustrating or inconvenient arises, instead of getting upset, remember that nothing is arbitrary or random – God is running the world. Ask yourself what you can learn from that situation. It could be improvement of a particular character trait or something more specific, like in the case of the spilled milk.