Owing to Pharaoh's decree to kill all Jewish newborn males, little Moses was placed in a basket and hidden amongst the rushes. Upon seeing the basket, the Midrash relates, Pharaoh's daughter extended her hand toward it, despite its being far beyond her reach. A miracle occurred and "her arm was extended for many arm-lengths," enabling her save the child.

Often, we are confronted with a situation that is beyond our capacity to rectify. .

Someone or something is crying out for our help, but there is nothing we can do: by all natural criteria, the matter is simply beyond our reach. So we resign ourselves to inactivity, reasoning that the little we can do won't change matters anyway.

But Pharaoh's daughter heard a child's cry and extended her arm.

An unbridgeable distance lay between her and the basket containing the weeping infant, making her action seem utterly pointless. But because she did the maximum of which she was capable, because her hand did not hang idle while a fellow human being needed her help, she achieved the impossible. .

Because she extended her arm, G‑d extended its reach, enabling her to save a life and raise the greatest human being ever to walk the face of the earth.


For more about Batya see A Transformed Identity and Moses-Saved.