Re-evaluating Truth in an Ever-Evolving World
"It takes genuine humility for a person to break out of their tunnel-visioned scope and be open to a wider story they've not engaged with before – or even already discounted as untrue."
By Beth Perkel
On a recent episode of my podcast Ideas that Change Lives, I explored the idea of how the stories we tell ourselves influence the way we see situations on a micro-level and the wider world on a macro-level. We all perceive and experience similar phenomena, yet people see it in totally divergent ways. What’s more, the longer our brains develop a story, the more we cling to its storyline.
Before we know it, something that was a viewpoint gets transformed into our irrefutable reality. It takes genuine humility for a person to break out of their tunnel-visioned scope, to be open to a wider story that they never chose to engage with before, or even one they had already discounted as untrue.
In fact, human nature is so entrenched in sticking to personal storylines that one of the only figures in the entire Torah that has a Torah portion named after him is memorialized as such because of his complete about-face on his lifetime views. He was willing to give up high positions, societal status — even his religion — to interface with what he discovered was the real truth of the world…
This person wasn’t Abraham, Moses or any of the other biblical figures we recognize as famous. This person was Yitro (Jethro), and his Torah portion is the one that Jews around the world just read this past week. While much of Jethro’s story lies beneath the surface of the text in the traditional rabbinical interpretation of the Torah known as the midrash, once explored — it is astounding.
Jethro was one of Pharaoh’s three prime advisors, among the group who foretold via astrology that the redeemer of the Israelites from Egyptian servitude had been born on a certain day — and would ultimately find his downfall through water. Therefore, Pharoah decreed that all boys born that day must be thrown into the Nile. Jethro vocally rejected Pharaoh’s idea of extermination and had to flee because of his opposition, shunning the Egyptian hierarchy he had climbed so high within and leaving his life of comfort and status behind.
Jethro fled to Midyan, where he once again rose in the ranks and became a high priest. He took with him the special staff passed down from Adam to Joseph that was then stolen by the Egyptians. Jethro planted it in his garden and declared that the only one who will be able to pull it out will be that very “redeemer” he foretold (the first seeds of King Arthur fiction planted with it).
When Moses did show up, it was after Jethro had just denounced his Midianite religion and was essentially excommunicated. This forced Jethro to start anew — yet again — and send his own daughters to draw water from the well themselves. When the young women are taunted at the well as outcasts, Moses steps in to rescue them. The family ultimately invites Moses back to their home as an expression of thanks, and Moses takes the famous staff out of their garden where it has been firmly planted for years now (and it becomes the one he performs wonders with in the exodus from Egypt). This signals to Jethro that Moses is the redeemer.
After Jethro’s daughter Tzipporah marries Moses and the couple leave to fulfill the directives given to him at the burning bush, Jethro remains in Midyan struggling to find his new footing. Everything he has tried, all of his storylines of what is real and fake in the world, have failed him. Time and again, he was willing to rethink and change his views, battling the inertia of the society that surrounded him in a quest for the truth…
…And then came the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai. The entire world shook, nature turned over, and yet when the incident was over, the nations of the world forgot the cataclysmic awe and went back to their tunnel-vision storylines.
Everyone except Jethro, that is. In this past week’s Torah portion, Jethro immediately recognizes G-d and His Torah had just been given to His chosen people, and knew he had finally found the truth. Jethro once again leaves everything behind and travels to his son-in-law to proclaim his entrance into his nation. He has now come full circle: from his foretelling about the birth of a redeemer of the Jewish people, to recognizing that the same child had ultimately become a redeemer to himself as well.
The principle I find so profound in Jethro’s story is the willingness to seek the truth even when it is inconvenient, even when we know we will have to leave people and comfortable mental inroads in the way we are used to thinking. In an age when objective truth seems so hard to come by, more than ever before we must be willing to analyze and rethink, regroup and react with new action. The Jewish people are being barraged with enemies wielding falsehoods and propaganda yet again, and it is up to us to be truth-seekers and clarifiers, ambassadors of G-d’s vision.
Right now, we have Jethro’s dilemma. We have a world noisily telling us the “truth” over and over again: Gaslighting, falsifying, or just plain out lying. But we all have Jethro’s example in mind and his story intertwined with our own. We, too, can evaluate or reevaluate with clear heads, tuning in to the core of who we are.
Post-October 7th, many secular Israelis have pulled a “Jethro” — boldly widening their view to engage with religious beliefs and commandments they never had before. There have been requests for thousands of military grade tzistzis (the fringed Judaic garment that goes under shirts) by young secular soldiers who want to wear it into battle, and many have begun to put on tefillin daily. For months now, since the beginning of the war, thousands of new Shabbat candles light up the Sabbath night in new homes all over Israel and even the globe. This is a giant step in rethinking personal storylines and goes well beyond the echoes of Jethro. In fact, this is the benchmark of our forefather Abraham.
The 19th century Hasidic commentator Sfas Emes explained that when Abraham heralded the call of G-d, he wasn’t actually sought out like we usually tend to view the story. Instead, G-d was actually broadcasting to every human being; it was just that Abraham was the only one who tuned in — and by doing so created a nation that was to be a light unto the world.
We are told in Pirkai Avos (the tractate of the Mishna known as Ethics of the Fathers) that the call from Sinai has never ceased. It sounds out now, as it always has. But it is up to us to tune into the channel, strengthen ourselves in who we are as a nation, and be mindfully clear on our storylines.
Beth Perkel is the author of Light at the Beginning of the Tunnel: Wiring our Children for Happiness, and hosts the podcast: Ideas That Change Lives.
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