Every Jew—A Holocaust Survivor

Why was Moses left on the Nile? The real reason has to do with responsibility—and has a message that still rings through today.

The Cry by the Nile

There is a well-known American story from the Vietnam War. A photographer once saw a young boy carrying someone much heavier than himself on his back, barely managing to walk. The photographer asked him, “Isn’t he too heavy for you?” The boy replied, “He’s not heavy—he’s my brother.” The line became famous, turned into a song, and eventually into a widely quoted saying.

In these weeks, we read the story of the Exodus from Egypt. Right at the beginning, the Torah tells us about Moses’ mother. After hiding her baby for three months, she could no longer keep him concealed. So she placed him into a small basket and set it down along the bank of the Nile.

Anyone who has visited the Nile—even today—will tell you it is not a pleasant place. It is filled with dangerous predatory crocodiles. But even more dangerous are the hippopotamuses, known in Hebrew as sus haye’or—“the horse of the Nile.” They are extremely aggressive animals and can run at speeds of up to forty kilometers per hour. Even locals are afraid to cross the Nile at night, and ferries operate only during the daytime. And it was in this place that Yocheved placed her three-month-old baby.

The Torah then continues: “And his sister stood at a distance, to know what would happen to him.” As Miriam stood from afar, the Torah goes on to describe how Pharaoh’s daughter came down to bathe in the Nile, noticed the basket, took it, opened it—and saw the child, “and behold, a na’ar crying.”

There is something strange in this verse. First, the Torah says she saw a child, which makes sense. But immediately afterward, the Torah calls him a na’ar—a term that usually refers to an older boy. Why would the Torah describe a three-month-old baby as a na’ar?

Rashi immediately notices this difficulty and resolves it in just two words: “His voice was like that of a na’ar.” It was indeed a baby who was crying—but his cry sounded like that of an older child, even though he was only three months old (Rashi to Exodus 2:6).

The Baal HaTurim offers a strikingly different interpretation. He writes: “This refers to Aaron, who was left standing next to the basket” (Exodus 2:6). Aaron was three years older than Moses—about three years and three months old at the time. He himself was still very young, but when he saw his baby brother lying alone in the basket, he burst into tears.

When we picture the scene, it becomes very vivid. Miriam, five years older than Moses, stands watching from a distance. Young Aaron stands beside the basket, crying. Pharaoh’s daughter passes by and sees a small child standing next to a basket, crying. She opens it and discovers a baby inside. At that moment, an older girl steps forward and offers to help with the child.

Everything here is guided by Divine providence—especially when it comes to Moses. The question is: what is behind this entire scene? Why did G-d orchestrate events so that baby Moses lay by the Nile, with Aaron crying beside him and Miriam standing guard from afar?

The Answer to Joseph’s Pain

In Judaism, there is a concept known as “teshuvat ha-mishkal”—a “balanced repentance.” The idea is that a wrongdoing is repaired through a corrective act that mirrors the original failure. The repair comes in the same form as the mistake.

Why did the Jewish people descend to Egypt in the first place?

The entire exile can be traced back to the sale of Joseph. His brothers threw him into a pit—“an empty pit, with no water in it” (Genesis 37:24). Joseph cried and pleaded with them not to do it. We know this from the brothers themselves, years later, when they stand before Joseph in Egypt and say to one another: “We are indeed guilty regarding our brother, for we saw his anguish as he pleaded with us, and we did not listen” (Genesis 42:21). In other words, everything began with the fact that they ignored the cries of their younger brother.

In order to merit redemption from Egypt, that failure had to be repaired—measure for measure. A small baby would be placed in a basket on the banks of the Nile, surrounded by man-eating crocodiles. This time, however, his brother and sister would stand nearby to protect him. And then the miracle would occur: Pharaoh’s own daughter would step in and save the child—Moses.

Immediately afterward, the Torah tells us that Pharaoh’s daughter named him Moses—“because I drew him out of the water” (Exodus 2:10). Why does the Torah adopt her name for him, rather than the name his parents gave him?

The Midrash (Yalkut Shimoni, Shemot §166) lists several names that Moses’ parents gave him—Tuviah, Yehonatan, and others. And yet, throughout the entire Torah, he is called only by the name given to him by Pharaoh’s daughter. Why this name, and why this one alone?

You Have a Responsibility

In the 1990s, a rabbi from the United States visited Yad Vashem. Among the places he toured was Yad LaYeled—the Children’s Memorial. It is a powerful site carved into an underground cavern, a memorial to the one and a half million Jewish children murdered in the Holocaust. When he entered, he found himself in near-total darkness—so dark that it was impossible to walk without holding onto the wall. Slowly, as his eyes adjusted, he saw tens of thousands of tiny points of light, like stars, shimmering in the darkness. At the center of the space burned a single candle. In the background, a voice recited names—children’s names—along with their ages and countries of origin: Yehuda and Yehudit, Yaakov and Sarah, Meir and Rachel…

He couldn’t bear to listen any longer. He ran outside and found himself breathing the fresh air of the Jerusalem hills.

Standing there, he thought to himself: I am the same age as those children whose names were just read. His name was not among them. And yet Hitler intended to kill every Jewish child. The only reason he survived was because his parents had emigrated from Europe before the war.

At that moment, he reached a conclusion: if G-d had saved him, then his life must have a purpose. He decided to dedicate his life to the rebuilding and revival of the Jewish people after the Holocaust.

With this in mind, we can understand something deeper in the story of the burning bush. 

When G-d reveals Himself to Moses, He calls him specifically by the name given to him by Pharaoh’s daughter—and not just once, but twice: “Moses, Moses.” G-d knew that Moses would resist leadership. Moses would argue, “Send someone else—send Aaron.” But by calling him Moses, G-d was reminding him of that name’s meaning: you were pulled from the water, saved from drowning in the Nile, from the deadly jaws of the crocodiles.

Your life was given to you as a gift—for a mission. To redeem the Jewish people from Egypt. That is why you were saved from the Nile. And that is why you cannot step aside and say, “Send someone else.”

The Rebbe said on several occasions that every Jew contains a spark of Moses himself, as referenced in the Talmud and explained in Chassidic teachings (Torat Menachem, 5742, vol. 1, p. 41). That means that every Jew—especially in our generation—hears the same call: “Moses, Moses.” You survived. You are alive. Not just to live a comfortable or pleasant life—but because you have a responsibility.

Each of us, in our own way, must do everything we can to contribute to the Jewish people.