[1] Prophet of Israel, who led the Israelite slaves out of Egyptian bondage and through the wilderness, to the plains of Moab, at a distance from the Land of Israel on the other side of the Jordan. He was not permitted to enter the Promised Land, that is, the land that God promised to give the Israelites though he was allowed to see it from a distance on the summit of Mount Nebo, where he is buried. He was born to an Israelite slave family. Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, had decreed that the Israelites were to murder all their sons. But Moses’ mother hid him in the rushes of the Nile, where Pharaoh’s daughter found him and raised him as her own son. He was raised as an Egyptian prince.
When he was forty, he killed an Egyptian whom he saw oppressing an Israelite, and fled from Egypt to Midian. He married the daughter of the priest Jethro, and, as a shepherd for his father-in-law, encountered a wonder in the wilderness: a bush that burned but was not consumed. God appeared to Moses at the bush and revealed His name to him and commanded him to go back to Egypt and instruct Pharaoh to free the Israelite slaves. This he did, and, after performing various miracles involving plagues upon Egypt for withholding the right to leave, Moses succeeded in leading the people out of Egypt and into the wilderness of Sinai. There, at Mount Sinai, Moses went up and received God’s Teaching. [2] Moshe Rabbenu: “Moses our rabbi,” or: “our master:” Talmudic representation of Moses as sage and rabbi, studying Torah as God’s first disciple, teaching Torah to Joshua, his disciple, and onward through time.
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