Simple Faith: Why Moshe Retold the Miracles

1“Moshe went out to meet his father-in-law … and they came into the tent.”¹ The Mechilta says: “‘And they came into the tent’: this is the beis midrash,” the house of Torah study.² The holy sefarim ask why Moshe took Yisro to learn Torah in the beis midrash the moment he arrived.³

2A little further on, the verse says, “Moshe told his father-in-law all that Hashem had done to Pharaoh and to Egypt for Israel's sake, all the hardship that had befallen them on the way, and Hashem rescued them.”⁴ But why did Moshe need to tell Yisro all this? Had Yisro not already heard of these miracles for himself? The Torah said so earlier: “Yisro heard … all that God had done for Moshe and for Israel His people.”⁵ Rashi takes up this question and cites the Mechilta: Moshe told him “to draw his heart, to bring him close to the Torah.”⁶ Yet the question remains. Yisro had come unbidden and of his own free will, to draw close to the faith of Israel and to join Hashem's inheritance. Why, then, did Moshe need to speak with him at such length to draw him to the Torah? Was Yisro not already fully prepared for it?

3Perhaps we can say this. We know that there are two paths to recognizing the Creator, blessed be He, and believing in Him. One is the path of simple, wholehearted faith, with no philosophical inquiry or proofs. The other is the path of inquiry and understanding, in the spirit of the verse “Lift up your eyes on high and see Who created these.”⁷ Yet the pious R' Yosef Yaavetz, one of the exiles of Spain, wrote a well-known passage in his sefer Ohr HaChaim⁸ [my holy father and teacher, zt"l, was fond of quoting these words of his]. During the expulsion from Spain, he writes, in the terrible times that tens of thousands of Jews lived through, it was precisely those whose faith was simple and wholehearted, without understanding or intellectual grasp, who withstood the harsh trials they faced. Those whose faith came from understanding and inquiry did not withstand the test of faith. So the first path, simple and wholehearted faith, is higher and more complete than the second, faith that comes from understanding and inquiry.

4aUntil then, Yisro had followed the path of inquiry. As Chazal said, there was no idol in the world that he had not worshipped.⁹ He inquired and searched until the signs and wonders Hashem performed for Israel, and their rescue from Egypt, brought him to understand that Hashem is God. But on this path he could still fall away from his faith. Through inquiry one can raise arguments to refute faith and to prove that the signs and wonders came about through nature. One could say, for example, that at the very hour the sea split before Bnei Yisrael, it was due to split by nature anyway. An argument along these lines is cited in Sefer Baal Shem Tov al HaTorah, the collection of the Baal Shem Tov's teachings on the Torah.¹⁰

4bSo although Yisro had come to draw close under the wings of the Shechinah, Moshe Rabbeinu knew that without simple faith Yisro was still far from complete faith. That is why Moshe took him straight to the beis midrash: to instill pure faith in him through the power of the Torah, without philosophical inquiries drawn from outside it. Then Moshe began to explain to him all the miracles of the Exodus, without any inquiry. This is the meaning of the verse “Moshe told all that Hashem had done for Israel, that Hashem had taken Israel out of Egypt.”¹¹ Moshe told Yisro a second time everything he already knew, to show him and teach him simple faith: every force there is comes only from the Holy One, blessed be He.

5This also settles the wording of the account. The verse says, “all that Hashem had done to Pharaoh and to Egypt,” and then again, “Yisro rejoiced over all the good that Hashem had done for Israel.”¹² The words “that Hashem had done” imply that only now did Yisro learn that it was Hashem Who had done this for Israel, even though the Torah already said so at the start.¹³ The reason is that only now, after Moshe's words, was Yisro's faith pure, with nothing else mixed into it. This is what Yisro meant when he said, “Now I know that Hashem is greater than all the gods.”¹⁴ “Now” in particular: once he had received the path of simple faith from Moshe, he was privileged to recognize the Creator wholeheartedly. My holy father said something similar on the verse “And his hands were emunah …,” where emunah, “steady,” is also the word for “faith.”¹⁵ He explained that Moshe Rabbeinu brought Israel to a faith as tangible as the senses, free of doubt. Just as it is simple and clear that the hands carry out the commands of the mind and heart at every moment, so faith in Hashem should be simple and clear in the heart and mind: everything happens according to His will and His guidance.

6[There is another way to explain why Moshe told Yisro again about the miracles he had already heard of.¹⁶ Yisro had indeed heard about the Exodus, but hearing alone accomplishes nothing. The main thing is to set one's deeds right, in the spirit of Chazal's words “Improve your deeds.”¹⁷ When Moshe Rabbeinu told the story, though, he knew how to educate, and how to tell the praise of the Omnipresent in a way that would reach a person's very soul. Through this, Yisro truly became a ba'al teshuvah.]

7My holy father would speak constantly and at length about simple faith, and he tried with all his strength to instill faith in us in this way. Chazal said, “Tzaddikim are greater in their death than in their lifetime.”¹⁸ So we ask that he bestow on us the strength to hold fast to simple faith, especially in this generation, when we live amid confusion and need it so badly. Amen.