What People Who Choose Judaism Help Us Remember
Yitro, Conversion, and the Covenant at Sinai
I’ve stood at the edge of the mikveh, the waters of ritual immersion, more than once, accompanying friends and students through the long, serious work of conversion. There is hesitation and anticipation. Then the room exhales.
Someone who stood at the edge now stands inside.
Moments like these make me think of a striking rabbinic claim about conversion: converts are said to have been present at Sinai.
I’ve always been struck by how radical that idea is. If only the Jewish people stood at Sinai, how could someone who was not yet Jewish have been there?
On a mystical level, we might imagine that all future Jewish souls stood at Sinai. But taken more literally, the claim should unsettle us.
The longer I accompany people through conversion, though, the less this language feels mystical to me. I’ve come to see that it reveals not only something about those who choose Judaism, but something essential about Judaism itself.
Judaism is not a spectator tradition. And yet much of contemporary Jewish life trains us to behave like spectators, to consume Jewish meaning, to outsource responsibility, to inherit rather than to innovate.
But to have stood at Sinai, whether by birth or by choice, is not to inherit something finished. It is to accept responsibility for a covenant that is still being made.
This week’s parasha, Yitro, is named for a man whom rabbinic tradition understands as joining the Jewish people even before formal conversion existed. It culminates in the covenant at Sinai.
Read together, these moments offer a powerful account of what covenantal responsibility actually demands of us.
Yitro, a Midianite priest and Moses’s father-in-law, comes to join the Jewish people after hearing what God had done for them in the Exodus.
The Torah tells us that he finds Moses overwhelmed by the burden of adjudicating disputes among the people, spending his days judging from morning until night. Yitro immediately sees what Moses does not: the system is unsustainable.
Without being invited to comment, Yitro speaks. He tells Moses plainly that the structure will collapse under its own weight. He advises Moses to create a layered system of judges, delegating authority and responsibility so that justice can function without destroying its leader.
Moses listens. The system is implemented, and it works. Yitro helps make Jewish life manageable.
What’s striking here is not only that Yitro offers advice, but that he speaks as a stakeholder. He doesn’t observe from the sidelines or wait to be consulted.
He uses the clarity of his gaze as an outsider to see a problem in the community he has joined and takes responsibility for addressing it. His counsel reshapes the structure of Israelite justice because he has claimed this people’s future as his own.
The sages understood this quality and its importance.1 The Midrash interprets the verse in which Yitro announces his arrival to Moses in different ways. One opinion imagines Yitro uncertain of his reception.
Another reads the verse more radically. The words “I am coming to you,” which in the plain meaning signal Yitro’s message to Moses, are heard instead as the voice of God: “I am the One who brings near and does not push away, the One who brought Yitro close.”
For the midrash, the message is clear: God wants Moses to know that God welcomes Yitro, and Moses must do the same.
Read this way, the midrash is not only about Yitro. It is about those who choose Judaism more broadly, and about the work the covenant still asks of those of us already inside. Those who come closer, who bind their fate to the Jewish people by choice, are not meant to remain at the edges.
They are meant to be received as insiders, with standing and responsibility.
To “bring near” does not mean to be polite or kind. It means to make room for belonging and contribution. This is not a task the Torah presents as finished. It is one we are still learning how to do today.
And Moses does. When Yitro eventually leaves the Israelite camp to go back to Midian, Moses accompanies him out with honor. He even urges Yitro to stay, reminding him that God affirmed his counsel.
One midrash imagines Yitro responding to Moses’ entreaties with a metaphor that is both humble and expansive: a candle does not illuminate a place already filled with light, Yitro says. There is already light here in the Israelite camp in the wilderness; his light is needed elsewhere.
He returns to his land to bring others closer, to share what he has learned, to extend the covenant beyond the immediate camp.
The name Yitro relates to the Hebrew word yoter, “more.” This is no coincidence. He does not simply join the Jewish people; he adds to them. He is welcomed, he speaks up, he reshapes their structures, and he carries the covenant outward.
He leaves the people stronger because he takes their future as his own. This is what it means to have stood at Sinai, for all of us. Not to receive passively, but to build actively, to add light where it’s needed, to expand the covenant’s reach.
It is not incidental that the Torah names the portion of revelation after a non-Israelite. Yitro is not only a model for conversion. He models what covenantal life asks of all of us.
In the months since October 7, some of the Jewish courage that has most moved me has come from people I’ve come to know who joined the Jewish people by choice.
Many of them converted at a time when the rabbinical court’s question — Are you sure you want to join a people that is despised and persecuted? — may have felt abstract, almost a historical relic. And then it stopped being theoretical.
When Jews were attacked, when Jewish belonging suddenly carried cost, they did not step back. They stepped forward. I watched them speak publicly when it would have been easier to stay quiet and show up as Jewish parents with a fierceness that surprised even them. They claimed peoplehood not as an idea, but as a mandate.
This is the spirit Yitro models. He does not join and remain peripheral. He joins and takes responsibility for the whole. He knows that Amalek has just attacked the Jewish people, and he joins them anyway. He claims their future as his concern.
Yitro clarifies what really happens at the mikveh. Conversion does not only transform the person who enters the water. It changes those already inside.
Because the person who emerges reminds us that Judaism is not a finished inheritance. It is an unfinished responsibility.
And sometimes those who choose us see that responsibility more clearly than those of us who were born to it.
Shabbat Shalom,
Mijal
Learning together:
I’m really looking forward to teaching next week at the London School of Jewish Studies, in a virtual series where students of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, of blessed memory, expand on his teachings on the weekly Torah portion. I’ll be teaching Parashat Mishpatim, on the theme “From Slavery to Morality.”
It’s this Wednesday, 2/11, at 2pm ET—free and open to all, wherever you are—and I’d love for you to join. Register here.
Recent conversations:
Noam and I recently had a fascinating conversation with my friend Jesse Arm from the Manhattan Institute. I value his sharp grasp of the American right—and his ability to distinguish between online noise and what polls and data actually show.
Jesse joined us to discuss Trump’s coalition, its internal factions, how Republicans are thinking about Israel, groypers, antisemitism, and much more.
We were also grateful to speak with Kate Davenport, who lives in Minneapolis. We wanted to hear, from a local perspective, what the past few weeks have felt like—and to think together about what moving forward with empathy and civic commitment might look like.
My thinking here was shaped by Rabbi Beni Lau’s insightful juxtaposition of these midrashim, all drawn from the Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, in Etnachta, in his commentary on Parashat Yitro.
I have taught candidates for conversion in the past and may perhaps do so again. Conversion to Judaism is chancy from both sides. But on some level the wager is worth it with a serious proviso. One must commit, which means being a stakeholder. That is the great challenge.
Thank you for pointing out the connection between Yitro and yoter.