Beth HaDerech; Messianic Jewish Congregation, Toronto, Canada

Our faithful teacher – Parasha Yitro (Videos)

Yitro, Yithro, or Yisro (יתרו — Hebrew for “Jethro,” the second word and first distinctive word in the parshah) is the seventeenth weekly Torah portion (parshah) in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading and the fifth in the book of Exodus. It constitutes Shemot / Exodus 18:1–20:23. Jews in the Diaspora read it the seventeenth Sabbath after Simchat Torah, generally in late January or February. Jews also read part of the parshah, Exodus 19:1–20:23, as a Torah reading on the first day of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, which commemorates the giving of the Ten Commandments. Jewish unity began at Sinai. When each individual Jew agreed to accept the Torah, he put aside his own desires and embraced the agenda set down by God. In so doing, every Jew focused on the same exact thing, the will of God. This unified state created a new entity called Kol Yisrael, the collective of Israel. This single entity means that each Jew is part of the other and that it is impossible to separate or walk away from the Kol. The Kol, in turn, is part of an unbreakable triangle: The Holy one, Blessed be He, the Torah and the Jewish people are one. Arguably, never again in history did we all agree on anything! Yet Sinai was the moment in history that mattered, the one that turned the Jewish...