One of my favorite portions, Yethro, nears.
Yethro, hotan Moshe - Moses' father-in-law - reminds me of my late father-in-law, Eliyahu ben Zohara, z"l.
Whatever positive attributes I have today I have because of my hotan, my father-in-law.
As a hakham once said, you can take the Torah and turn it and turn it and every time something new is discovered.
This time it occurs to me that Yethro has good reason to be angry with his son-in-law; to storm into the Israelite camp threatening bodily harm to Moses.
Consider.
Yethro welcomes Moses into his family, as my father-in-law did for me.
Moses marries one of Yethro's daughters and fathers two sons. My wife and I have two sons, a daughter, and now a grand-daughter.
Shortly after the second son is born, he drags Tzpora from her home and reluctantly heads off to Egypt. When our first son was 10 months old, I took my wife and son to America. (My father-in-law got to meet and spend time with my children, but he died before my daughter wed.)
We know the expedition commences shortly after the birth of the child since it is on the way that G-d "tries to kill" Moses. (שמות ד, כ''ד) Why? Because he failed to circumcise the child. Tzpora has to do the job, telling Moses "חתן-דם אתה לי."
After HaShem convinces Moses to go back to Egypt - it only took THREE miracles: a bush that fire failed to consume, a rod that turned into a snake, and instant leprosy with equally instant cure, Moses goes to Yethro and tells him he wants to return to Egypt to see if his (Moses') brothers are still alive. Yethro, probably thinking (as my father-in-law must have thought) that Moses would soon be returning, told his son-in-law "לך לשלום." (For a discussion of לך לשלום vs. לך בשלום see http://tinyurl.com/b2gulde.)
Fast forward.
Pharaoh finally capitulates and allows Moses, the descendents of Yosef, and some others to leave Egypt. True, he has second thoughts and chases after the hoard only to see his forces drown when the sea that parted for Moses and his crowd closes over Pharaoh's people. How do we know that Pharaoh survived? Well, we are told that אחד מהם לא נותר; the rabbis tell us that one person was Pharaoh; someone had to return to tell the people - and record the disaster for Pharaoh's army. Like the nazis centuries later, the Egyptians carefully recorded almost everything.
In any event, Yethro hears of Moses' exploits and goes, with his daughter Tzpora and her two sons - the Torah consistently refers to the young men as her sons - to meet Moses.
But, knowing "things happen" when a husband is away from his family, Yethro delicately stops before reaching Moses' camp and sends a messenger to announce that "I, thy father-in-law Yethro, am coming to you and bringing your wife and her two sons."
If Yethro was angry for Moses running off and abandoning his family, the Torah makes no mention of this.
Instead, it says that Moses (wisely) "went out to meet his father-in-law and bowed and kissed him." (שמות י''ח, ז)
Moses tells Yethro everything that transpired in Egypt and up to the present point. Yethro, having heard of Moses' exploits earlier (שמות י''ח, א) and then again from Moses his son-in-law, "rejoiced for all the goodness which HaShem had done to Israel and said 'Blessed is the L-rd who brought you out of the hand of the Egyptians. Now I know that the L-rd is greater than all (other) gods'."
Unlike the multitude that came out of Egypt, Yethro believed in HaShem without seeing any miracles. We know that the generation that left Egypt was a rebellious group that, save for two had to die out before we could enter what would become Israel. There is no hint, in Torah, that Yethro became a "חוזר לשאלה."
My father-in-law was a simple man. He lacked a yeshiva education, but he knew the Torah and the laws. He worked hard to see that his children - four sons and three daughters - were educated, both in Judaism and general education.
There was no distinction made between his own children and the men and women his children married - well, almost none; I think, speaking as an in-law, that maybe we, the in-laws, got preferential treatment . . . or maybe it just seemed that way.
Eliyahu ben Zohara, ע''ה, was not a "cohen Midian," but he taught me more than Yethro taught Moses, as a husband, a parent, and as a father-in-law.
