Rabbi Shimshon Rafael Hirsch
Rabbi Shimshon Rafael HirschCourtesy

Yocheved saw that Moshe "was good and she hid him for three months" (Shemos 2:2).

Asks Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch: "What mother does not find her baby beautiful?" Furthermore, "if the baby had been less beautiful, would [Yocheved], on that account, not have done her very utmost to snatch it from certain death"?

Of course not. So of what relevance was Moshe's goodness?

Answers Rav Hirsch: "Good" in this context doesn't mean cute or beautiful. It means "quiet, patient, modest." Babies by nature are unpredictable, self-centered characters, liable to cry at any time of day. Moshe was an exception. From day one, he displayed signs of being "anav me'od" (extremely humble).

Yocheved saw that her child never cried needlessly, "so that one only had to satisfy its requirements and it would keep quiet." Such a baby, she reasoned, "it would be possible to keep hidden" from Pharaoh's death squads.

Indeed, so great was Moshe's "goodness" that he didn't even cry as he lay all alone on the Nile River in a basket. That's why Basyah didn't know the basket contained a baby until she opened it (as Shemos 2:5-6 indicates). That's also why Basyah decided to rescue Moshe. "A yelling infant is not beautiful and does not attract by its charm. It was the first impression of the child peacefully looking up at her that won the princess's heart," Rav Hirsch writes.

But Moshe *did* cry a moment later. Why? Rav Hirsch answers that Moshe had never, to that point, seen "the physiognomy of an Egyptian woman." He had only seen "the Semitic profiles of his parents and family." It was the "sight of a strange face" that caused baby Moshe cry.

May we all merit to be as adults what Moshe already was as a baby: selfless and sensitive to the people around him.

Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808-1888) – head of the Jewish community in Frankfurt, Germany for over 35 years – was a prolific writer whose ideas, passion, and brilliance helped save German Jewry from the onslaught of modernity.

Elliot Resnick, PhD, is the host of “The Elliot Resnick Show” and the editor of an upcoming work on etymological explanations in Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch’s commentary on Chumash.