The scene, the midbar 3,300 years ago.
The Shver: “So, son, how was your day?”
“Same old, same old. People lined up for hundreds of amot from the door of my tent to ask me legal questions and handle disputes. And the questions! You have to hear them!”
“I know, I know. I stood outside, I watched and I listened. And I quickly realized that you are heading for a nervous breakdown just as your job is getting ready to take off. Deciding between neighbors about whose ox gored what is not for you. Here’s what I think you should do….”
You read about it in last week’s parsha.
Thus, a non-Jew, Yitro planted the seed of what would become the Jewish court system starting with judges in the desert down through the millennia until today’s Jewish law courts, the “beis din.” Yitro’s suggestion saved the whole legal system in the midbar and, possibly, Israelite society along with it. The shver knew best.
To me, the best part of beis din is that it allows us to not have to air our laundry in civil courts; think of agunot and conversion issues on one hand, and commercial disputes on the other hand, where Jewish law is best attuned to solving these issues without publicity.
That Yitro was a smart guy, and his son-in-law Moshe was smart, too, because he listened.
