As part of my consulting work I look to Jewish texts for leadership lessons. One of the classics comes from this week's parsha when Yitro tells Moshe that trying to adjudicate all of the Israelites issues by himself will cause both him and his people to wear out. As an experienced leader himself, Yitro (a chief of Midian) tells Moshe to do two things. The first is to teach the people what they need to know, so they could be more self-sufficient. The second is share responsibility of leadership with others in an organized fashion with layers of leadership. To first
choose "capable individuals who fear God—trustworthy ones who spurn ill-gotten gain" and then to give them responsibility "Set these over them as chiefs of thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens, and let them judge the people at all times. Have them bring every major dispute to you, but let them decide every minor dispute themselves. Make it easier for yourself by letting them share the burden with you." (Shemot 18:21-22) These two pieces of advice still ring true today. To highlight, the lesson of layers of leadership, try a layered food. I'm going with this 3 Layer Kugel.
One of the best impacts of this #parshainspiredmenus project is how it's gotten our kids engaged. Our youngest was reading through the parsha to help find something for this week and came across something that made him say "Ema, you have to do something with this." He noted that after the Ten Commandments, which has already told the people:
You shall not make for yourself a sculptured image, or any likeness of what is in the heavens above, or on the earth below, or in the waters under the earth.
You shall not bow down to them or serve them. (Shemot 20:4-5)
God again then states "With Me, therefore, you shall not make any gods of silver, nor shall you make for yourselves any gods of gold." (Shemot 20:20) Of course, this seems repetitive, which inspires questions. Many commentaries, building off of Mehkilta and Rashi focus on the "with me" part of the verse to explain that God is making it clear that not only shouldn't the Israelites make idols of
God, but aslo they should "not make an image of My ministers that minister before Me in the heights." So, no images of angels, etc. Of course, one could point out that God directly tells the Israelites to construct cherubim for the top of the Ark that holds the tablets. To this the commentators point out that if God specifically instructs you to do it, you can do it, but you shouldn't deviate from the instruction - not making them of silver and not making replicas of them to have in synagogues.
I found two other commentaries that looked at it a little differently that I found interesting. The Or HaChaim says that the Torah describes two kinds of idolatry (spoiler alert - they are both bad, they are just different.) Gods of silver refers to idols made by someone who believes in the deity and wants to worship it himself. Gods of gold refers to someone who doesn't believe, but is willing to "reap some immediate and indirect benefit therefrom for themselves. For instance, such a person may ask a third person to pay him a sum of money in order to go through the motions of consulting such deity on the third person's behalf." This person is engaging in idol worship for the gold. Rabbeinu Bachya takes a totally different look and thinks of the gods of silver and gods of
gold as metaphorical. He interprets it to mean that “while you are engaged in prayer to Me, do not think of your gold, your silver, etc.; in other words, when you address Me I expect to have your full attention, do not share Me in your thoughts with anything else at such a time. If you were to do that, I would consider it as equivalent to your having made competing deities.” The idea of being present in the moment, and not allowing yourself to be distracted by other thoughts is, not surprisingly, also something I talk about in my consulting work. The Torah's wisdom is ever-giving. Any gold or silver food could be the special food for this section of the parsha. I'm going to go with Roasted Golden Beets.
You can also check out the #parshainspiredmenus for Yitro from 2024 and 2023 (the Bazin is still one that gets mentioned in my house.)
Shabbat Shalom & B'Tayavon!
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