When a person is having good times, they should remember that those good times started during shutterstock
And Jethro, a priest from Midian, Moses' son-in-law, heard (18:1).
On the verse that opens the parasha - "And Jethro heard," writes the Holy Rashi "What rumor was heard and came, the parting of the Red Sea and the war of Amalek Jethro heard the parting of the Red Sea and the war of Amalek and came". Moses stands and tells Jethro everything that happened to the children of Israel during the exodus from Egypt about Israel, everything that happened with them on the way and then "and they will come together" - Jethro was very anxious.
And here we have to understand, what did Moses have to add and say more? After all, the Holy Torah says " And Jethro heard" meaning that he had already heard about the Red Sea and the Amalek war, so why did Moses need to add more stories to him, after all the whole world had heard about the splitting of the Red Sea and the whole world had heard about the Amalek war. What else could be added to this until the words made Jethro anxious Great? And in general, after all, before he was a priest of Midian, Jethro was one of Pharaoh's advisors. He knew very well what was going on in Egypt, what more did Moses need to tell?
But it is possible to clarify and say a great foundation, we are used to a person who has success being happy with it and seeing it as one thing. And if he has failure he sees failure as another thing. People don't mix success and failure together. If a person has a good time he sees the good time alone, and if he has a hard time he sees it alone.
People don't mix the good times and the hard times together and see them as two separate things.
But according to the Holy Torah it is not so.
A person who wants to see life in God's way, must see life as one thing, that success and failure are one thing.
When a person has a time that appears to be a failure, it is not a failure but a part of success - a decline in order to rise.
While the Israelites were in Egypt, whoever looked at what was happening in Egypt would see it as a difficult time that the people of Israel were going through. The Egyptians enslaved them, the Egyptians did hard things to them and tortured them.
Such a person would say that the people of Israel are going through difficult times.
After that he would see that they reach good times - they came out of Egypt, were redeemed and saved.
But this is the evidence of a person who is not God-fearing.
A person who sees the good and the bad in his life as two separate times.
On the other hand, in the view of a God-fearing person, he sees everything as one time.
When Jethro heard about the splitting of the Red Sea and the Amalek war, he heard it as one story and what happened to the Israelites in Egypt he saw as a second story.
He saw the success of the children of Israel with everything that happened when they left Egypt as one story, and the suffering that the children of Israel went through in Egypt he saw as a difficult time that they went through.
But Moshe Rabbnu comes and settles Jethro's evidence - before Jethro becomes part of the nation of Israel and becomes so important that a parasha is named after him, and so important that he gives Moshe Rabbnu the advice to put judges in the nation of Israel.
And so Moses stands and teaches Jethro a great principle in life - to see the times of success and the times of failure as one time.
Part of the failure, part of the hard time is the time of construction.
"The hard times are the beginning of the good times."
Rabbi Pinto/Relation
A person begins to build up during the difficult times he goes through.
When he has hard times, they are part of his growth.
And as the Holy Zohar says any fruit that is sown in the ground, does not begin to grow until it rots - only after it rots, then it begins to grow.
Salvation does not come to man until he goes through a hard time, and then the good time comes to him.
Before there is light there is darkness, before there are good times you have to go through hard times.
In Jethro's view, the time of Egyptian slavery was one thing and the time of the Exodus was another.
Moses stands and connects the two times and explains to him "When we were in Egypt and there were hard times, when Pharaoh enslaved the Israelites in hardship and killed the children, all this was part of salvation and success, part of the building for the continuation of the time of redemption and the great and good time."
That's why "and they will unite" Jethro had great anxiety because he did not understand this until Moshe deepened in him this divine insight that failure and success are one and the same thing.
We must see this as the foundation of life: the hard times are the beginning of the good times.
When a person has good times, he should remember that these good times began during the difficult time when he studied and learned. During the difficult time when he strengthened his faith in God, that's when his salvation and success began.
David Berger, in collaboration with Shuba Israel
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