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The Children of Israel multiply in Egypt.
Threatened by their growing numbers, Pharaoh enslaves
them and orders the Hebrew midwives, Shifrah and Puah,
to kill all male babies at birth. When they do not
comply, he commands his people to cast the Hebrew babies
into the Nile. A child is born
to Jocheved, the daughter of Levi, and her husband,
Amram, and placed in a basket on the river, while the
baby’s sister, Miriam, stands watch from afar. Pharaoh’s
daughter discovers the boy, raises him as her son, and
names him Moses.
As a young man, Moses leaves the
palace and discovers the hardship of his brethren. He
sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew and kills the
Egyptian. The next day he sees two Jews fighting; when
he admonishes them, they reveal his deed of the previous
day, and Moses is forced to flee to Midian. There he
rescues Jethro’s daughters, marries one of them -
Zipporah - and becomes a shepherd of his father-in-law’s
flocks.
G-d appears to Moses in a burning bush
at the foot of Mount Sinai and instructs him to go to
Pharaoh and demand: “Let My people go, so that they may
serve Me.” Moses’ brother, Aaron, is appointed to serve
as his spokesman. In Egypt, Moses and Aaron assemble the
elders of Israel to tell them that the time of their
redemption has come. The people believe; but Pharaoh
refuses to let them go, and even intensifies the
suffering of Israel.
Moses returns to G-d to protest: “Why
have You done evil to this people?” G-d promises that
the redemption is close at hand.
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