יתרו

What is the highlight of Parshas Yisro? Matan Torah. Matan Torah is the greatest event that happened in history. There is nothing that even comes close to that event. In Parshas Vaeschanan, Moshe Rabeinu warns us, in the strongest terms, to be exceedingly careful and to guard ourselves very much against not forgetting the event that our own eyes saw. You have to see the event, you have to remember the event, and you have to have this event at the front of your heart.

The subject we’d like to discuss today is an important one because many people pose the following question. The Torah says: I created an evil inclination, and I created Torah as its antidote (Kiddushin 30b). So that means to say that the antidote, the counterforce for the yetzer hara, is Torah.

The first passuk in this week’s parshah begins by telling us the following: וישמע יתרו כהן מדין חתן משה, Yisro (who was the priest of Midian, and the father-in-law of Moshe), heard, את כל אשר עשה אלקים למשה ולישראל עמו, everything that Hashem did for Moshe and for His Nation Israel כי הוציא ה’ את ישראל ממצרים, that Hashem had taken Bnei Yisrael out of Mitztrayim (Shemos 18:1).