Sidrah
The ambiguous identity of Moses – this week’s parashah, Shemot
“When Moses grew up he went out to his people and witnessed their burdens. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his people” Exodus 2:11
January 8, 2026 11:09
“When Moses grew up he went out to his people and witnessed their burdens. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his people” Exodus 2:11
January 8, 2026 11:09In these contentious days, it seems that empathy has been weaponised. To show concern and solidarity for those within our own family, faith, community or interest group is either praised as displaying rootedness and loyalty, or derided as parochial and narrow-minded.
The story of Moses’s emergence into adulthood as told in this week’s portion can be read in this context. From early infancy he grows up in Pharaoh’s court until one day he goes out to meet his people.
Most understandings of the narrative assume that it is the Hebrews that Moses is intending to see, suggesting that before this episode the nature of his true identity must have been revealed to him. He goes out, in Martin Buber’s phrase, “because he wishes to see his brethren”.
There is, however, another way of reading the text, one suggested in the Middle Ages by Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra and in our times by Rabbi Jonathan Magonet. In their reading, the kinsfolk he initially intends to observe are the Egyptians with whom he has grown up, and their efforts to complete a great building project.
Moses’s identity is also ambiguous. He is the quintessential Hebrew, yet he is also a Prince of Egypt. Once he becomes a witness to the oppression of the Israelites, something awakens within him. He finds more kinsfolk than he had originally imagined.
The reader is asked to ponder these different versions. Did he set out like a minor royal on an official walkabout, or as a tearaway exploring his birth parents’ suppressed identity? Does his identity shift fuel his social activism, or vice versa?
When, later in this action-packed portion, Moses says to Pharaoh: “Let my people go!”, he certainly speaks on behalf of his ancestral people. And yet might he also be reflecting the Egyptian parts of his identity as well? He might be saying: until the Israelites are freed, the Egyptians too will live in a kind of servitude. End this cycle of oppression! Let both my peoples go!
Within the space of three verses (2:10-12), we are told twice that Moses grew up, and three times that he saw. His journey of maturation includes a broadening of his perspective. The bounds of his empathy are expanded.
The French philosopher Gilles Deleuze once set out the challenge of contemporary society as “how to go beyond partialities, how to pass from ‘limited sympathy’ to an ‘extended generosity’”.
Moses is driven not by universalist abstractions, but of radical engagement. By identifying with those on both sides of the conflict even as he is a major protagonist on one side, empathy is not weaponised but expanded.
Image: Moses slays the Egyptian taskmaster by James Tissot, late 19th century (Wikimedia Commons)
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