Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair

Standing With You

At the conclusion of the Second World War, a small group of non-Jewish British intellectuals made an extraordinary decision.

They chose to convert to Judaism.

Their reasoning was stark and unsentimental. History, they believed, had issued a warning: if one does not actively stand on the side of moral truth, one will eventually become complicit in its negation. They had witnessed how Germany, regarded as the most cultured and enlightened nation in Europe, descended within a few short years into unprecedented barbarism. Faced with that reality, they resolved not merely to admire Jewish survival from a distance, but to cast their lot with the Jewish people themselves.

Rashi, commenting on the opening words of Parashat Yisro—“And Yisro heard”—asks the obvious question. What did Yisro hear that compelled him to come? The answer, as the Gemara notes, is striking. Yitro heard of the splitting of the sea and the war with Amalek (Zevachim 116a). Why these two events, of all the miracles surrounding the Exodus?

Amalek represents a hatred that is irrational, instinctive, and visceral. Its animosity toward the Jewish people is not ideological or strategic, but elemental. It is antisemitism as reflex, as natural as breathing. Yet not everyone is born an Amalek. Most people inhabit the vast moral middle: neither Jew nor Jew-hater, neither ally nor enemy, waiting, consciously or not, to be pulled in one direction or the other.

Yisro understood something profound. Inspiration that is not acted upon does not simply fade; it decays. Left unattended, moral awakening curdles into cynicism, disbelief, and ultimately revulsion. He recognized that if he failed to respond decisively to the overwhelming clarity of the sea splitting before the eyes of the world, he too would drift toward the coldness of Amalek, and move toward moral detachment, denial, and hostility. Conversion, for Yisro, was not sentiment; it was urgency.

Anyone paying attention to contemporary events cannot fail to notice the bitter irony of much of the world’s accusation that Israel is committing genocide. The very concept of genocide was coined by Raphael Lemkin, a Jewish lawyer, to give language to the horrors of the Nazi extermination of the Jews. Among the judges deliberating interim measures in the case concerning Gaza, only one—Justice Julia Sebutinde of Uganda—rejected all proposed provisional measures, citing the absence of credible evidence of genocidal intent on Israel’s part.

Genocide is defined by intent: the deliberate aim to obliterate a people. It is not synonymous with the tragic civilian casualties that accompany urban warfare, especially when civilians are deliberately used as human shields by terrorist regimes. The chant “From the River to the Sea,” by contrast, is an unambiguous call for the erasure of a nation.

And yet, amid the noise and distortion, moments of moral clarity still emerge. The Jewish people may never have had many friends, but when someone—like Yisro—steps forward and declares, “I stand with you,” it does more than encourage.

It restores faith in human conscience itself.

Rabbi Mordechai Becher

Climbing the Mountain

The Imrei Emes cites a teaching in the name of the Kotzker Rebbe, Rav Menachem Mendel of Kotzk, on the verse describing the revelation at Mount Sinai. Hashem warns the Jewish people: “Hishamru lachem alos bahar u’negoa biktzeihu—Be exceedingly careful not to ascend the mountain, nor to touch even its edge. “Kol hanogea bahar mos yumas—Whoever touches the mountain shall surely die” (Shemos 19:12).

On a simple level, the meaning is clear and straightforward. The sanctity of Sinai was absolute. The people were forbidden not only from ascending the mountain, but even from brushing against its perimeter. Any violation, even at the margins, carried fatal consequence.

But the Kotzker Rebbe read the verse in a radically different way.

He explained it not as a prohibition, but as a challenge. If you wish to ascend the mountain—if you aspire to Sinai—then do not content yourself with merely touching the edges. Hishamru lachem: beware of superficial engagement. Alos bahar u’negoa biktzeihu: if all you are doing is grazing the margins, that is empty, even pathetic. True ascent demands total commitment.

Kol hanogea bahar mos yumas—to truly touch the mountain, to truly encounter Sinai, requires readiness for complete self-investment, even self-sacrifice. Not literally to die, but to give oneself over entirely.

This is not pshat; it is not the plain meaning of the verse. But it is profoundly beautiful.

What the Kotzker is teaching is that Sinai is not a historical location. Sinai is any mitzvah. It is Torah study. It is chesed. It is avodas Hashem in all its forms. As the Chovos HaLevavos teaches, virtually any permissible act can become a mitzvah depending on one’s kavanah. Intention transforms action.

But transformation only occurs when one is fully present. If I am merely “touching the edge”—half-engaged, distracted, hedging my commitment—I receive nothing. Sinai demands immersion. It demands wholeness. It demands that I bring my entire self into the experience.

That is the Kotzker’s warning: do not dare approach holiness tentatively. If you want the mountain, you must give your life to it—not in martyrdom, but in meaning.

And the key to sustaining such total engagement is simcha.

There is a well-known story about Rav Simcha Bunim of Peshischa, the rebbe of the Kotzker. Before he became a rebbe, and even before he became a pharmacist, Rav Simcha Bunim served as the manager, effectively the CEO, of a lumber enterprise in Danzig. One day, he was walking along the riverbank with several students when one of them slipped in the mud and was swept into the river by the current. None of them could swim; swimming simply was not part of nineteenth-century Polish Hasidic life.

As the man was being carried away, the group ran helplessly along the riverbank, unable to intervene. Suddenly, Rav Simcha Bunim called out to him in Yiddish, “Give my regards to the Leviathan.”

It sounded absurd. A man is drowning, and you send greetings to the mythical sea creature? It was the last thing anyone expected, and it was utterly impractical.

But something extraordinary happened. The man in the water smiled. That moment of levity pierced his despair. He began thrashing again, fighting the current with renewed energy, managing to maneuver himself close enough to the bank for the others to pull him out. His life was saved.

Later, the chassidim asked Rav Simcha Bunim what he had been thinking. He explained by quoting the verse in Isaiah (55:12): “Ki b’simcha tetze’u.” We usually translate it as “You shall go out with joy.” But Rav Simcha Bunim read it literally: With simcha, you can get out of anything.

“All I saw on his face,” he said, “was yei’ush, despair. If I could inject even a moment of simcha, I knew it would shift his inner state. One thought would spark another, his body would follow his mind, and he would save himself.”

And he did.

This insight reaches far beyond that riverbank. Simcha is not a superficial emotion; it is a cognitive and spiritual force. In modern terms, simcha moves us out of compulsive dopamine-driven distraction and into a state of meaning, reflection, and flow; what psychologists might associate with serotonin and sustained engagement.

That is Sinai. Not touching the edge, but climbing the mountain with joy, wholeness, and total presence.

Rabbi Uren Reich

I Feel Your Pain

In Parshas Shemos, the Torah narrates that Moshe Rabbeinu had two sons. The Torah explicitly names the first, Gershom (Shemos 2:22), while the episode involving the second son appears later without ever mentioning his name (ibid. 4:25). And yet, here in Parshas Yisro, when Yisro arrives with Tzipporah and the two children, the Torah suddenly identifies both sons by name, revealing for the first time the name of the second: Eliezer.

This is puzzling. The narrative here is not about childbirth or naming; it is about Yisro’s arrival. Why does the Torah choose this moment to repeat Gershom’s name and to disclose Eliezer’s? Why here?

Perhaps the Torah is teaching us something essential.

The Parsha describes in detail how Yisro comes and is received with great honor. According to one view in Chazal, the entire sequence of events in Parshas Yisro occurred before Matan Torah, exactly in the order of the verses. Everything discussed unfolded prior to the giving of the Torah.

That Midrash, though, raises a striking question. After Yisro advises Moshe on establishing a judicial system and he is welcomed with dignity as Moshe’s father-in-law, Moshe sends him away, and Yisro departs before Matan Torah. The Torah seems to assume this was self-evident. But why should that be so? Why was Yisro not present at Sinai?

Chazal explain with a powerful principle. When a person endures suffering, others may come and offer empathy—“I feel your pain.” But when that person emerges from suffering into relief, into redemption and joy, only those who truly lived that pain belong in that moment of celebration. A stranger to the suffering has no place at the moment of relief.

So too, says the Midrash: “My children, the Bnei Yisrael, endured the servitude of Egypt,” said Hashem. “Now comes the moment of simcha, the moment of transformation into a mamleches kohanim v’goy kadosh. And Yisro? During the years of bondage, his life continued normally. Now he wishes to join the joy of Kabbalas HaTorah? That would be inappropriate. This was not a moment for an outsider. And therefore, Moshe sent his father-in-law away.

But this explanation immediately raises another question. What about Moshe Rabbeinu’s children? They too were not physically present during the suffering in Egypt. Why, then, did they remain for Matan Torah?

This is where the Torah’s emphasis on their names becomes critical.

Rabbi Simcha of Dvinsk, in his commentary Meshech Chochmah, points out a profound distinction. Moshe named his first son Gershom because “Ger hayiti b’eretz nochriyah—I was a stranger in a foreign land.” This was not a geographical observation; it was an existential cry. Moshe felt deeply displaced. Despite comfort, safety, and success, he experienced himself as an outsider. Why? Because his heart was with his people in bondage. He could not detach himself from their suffering.

The second son he named Eliezer, because, “Elokei avi b’ezri, vayatzileini me’cherev Pharaoh—The G-d of my father came to my aid and saved me from Pharaoh’s sword.” This name expresses gratitude, deliverance, and divine rescue.

Which emotion, then, was stronger for Moshe Rabbeinu? The gratitude of survival or the pain of separation from his suffering people?

The answer is encoded in the names themselves. The first child is named for Moshe’s sense of exile, his anguish at not being with Bnei Yisrael. That pain was so dominant, so defining, that it became the name of his son. The second name expresses salvation, but it comes later. Moshe’s primary emotional reality was not comfort, not success, not even miraculous rescue. It was identification with the pain of Klal Yisrael.

This is the Torah’s answer.

Moshe’s children grew up in a home saturated with that consciousness. Even if they were not physically enslaved in Egypt, they lived the experience. They absorbed the agony, the longing, the solidarity. They were not strangers to the suffering, and therefore they were not strangers to the joy.

That is why they belonged at Sinai.

The Torah is teaching us a foundational truth: participation in another’s simcha does not require shared circumstances. It requires shared inner experience. A person who truly lives with another’s pain is not an outsider when relief comes.

This is the power of nosei b’ol im chaveiro, bearing the burden with another. When redemption arrives, such a person is no longer a stranger. He belongs.

And that, ultimately, is why the Torah names Moshe Rabbeinu’s children here—at the threshold of Matan Torah.

Rabbi Dovid Goldwasser

Preparation and Transformation

We read something deeply striking in the encounter between Yisro and Moshe Rabbeinu. When Yisro finally arrives, the Torah describes an emotionally charged moment: Moshe Rabbeinu recounts to his father-in-law “All that Hashem had done to Pharaoh and to Egypt, for the sake of Klal Yisrael” (Shemos 18:8). At last, Yisro stands face to face with Moshe, ready to be brought fully into the story of the Jewish people and into an understanding of Hashem Himself.

The Alter of Navardok asks a striking question. Why did Moshe Rabbeinu wait for Yisro to come to him? Why did Moshe not take the initiative and go to Yisro, explaining everything himself? Logistically, it would have been far easier, since Yisro’s whereabouts were known, while Moshe was in the Midbar, a vast and undefined desert, far more difficult to locate.

The Alter answers that this moment teaches one of the most foundational principles of spiritual life: hachanah (preparation). Nothing transformative happens without it. If a person wants to be influenced, if they seek elevation, if they aspire to become more spiritual, they must prepare themselves. True growth requires days, months, and even years of inner readiness.

Yisro had to prepare himself. He needed to journey physically and spiritually, to ready his heart and mind. Only once he had undergone that hachanah was he capable of receiving hashpa’ah, genuine influence. Only then could Moshe Rabbeinu affect him so profoundly, transforming a former priest of Midian into the great father-in-law of Moshe Rabbeinu and a true seeker of Hashem.

We see this same principle in the story of Eliyahu HaNavi and the prophets of the Baal. Eliyahu did not begin with miracles. He first challenged the people: “How long will you waver between two paths?” (Melachim I 18:21). How long will you sit on the fence, torn between falsehood and truth, between the Baal and the Ribono Shel Olam?

Only after forcing them to confront the contradiction within themselves did the miracle occur. Why not perform the miracle immediately? Because without hachanah, even the most overwhelming revelation cannot penetrate. The people needed time to ask themselves: What am I doing? Do I truly believe that an idol—wood and stone—has power to give life, health, or sustenance? That inner questioning was the preparation that made them receptive, open, and fertile for change.

This principle applies to every area of life. To be a good spouse requires hachanah. To be a good Jew requires hachanah. To truly help another human being requires thought and preparation. “Ashrei maskil el dal—Fortunate is the one who thinks carefully about what the poor person actually needs” (Tehillim 41:2). Real chesed is not impulsive; it is intentional.

The same is true with mitzvos. If one wants to perform a mitzvah mehadrin min hamehadrin, it requires preparation. One must take time, open sefarim, learn, and understand how to approach the mitzvah in its most elevated form.

This idea is embodied in a remarkable story about the first Belzer Rebbe, the Sar Shalom. People often assume that greatness comes easily, that a tzaddik becomes a tzaddik because of lineage or natural talent. But true greatness is forged through years of preparation.

Before assuming leadership as Rebbe, the Sar Shalom prepared himself in an extraordinary way. For one thousand consecutive nights, he did not sleep. Night after night, he learned without interruption, readying himself for the immense responsibility he was about to shoulder. And he did not do it alone. His wife, Rebbetzin Malka, stood beside him throughout those thousand nights, holding the candle as he learned.

Those nights of hachanah forged the spiritual leader who would guide generations. It is no coincidence that the Torah describes the ideal woman with the words: “Lo yichbeh balaylah nerah—Her candle does not go out at night” (Mishlei 31:18).

Preparation is what ignites transformation. Without hachanah, nothing truly changes. With it, lives, and worlds, are reshaped.