The Talmud relates that Batyah set out one morning to immerse herself in the Nile in order to convert to Judaism. She heard the distinctive cry of an infant and, finding a small ark floating in the water, she stretched out her arm to reach it. Seeing a baby boy inside, she immediately recognized that he was a Jewish baby, set adrift in an effort to escape her father’s murderous decree. Already her Jewish soul had begun to guide her, although her conversion was not yet complete, and she dared to not only save the baby but to take him into Pharaoh’s own palace to raise him, despite the fact that his Jewish identity would be obvious.
She named him Moses, “for I drew him (meshitihu) from the water.”
Though Moses had seven names, it is by the name that he received from Batyah that he is remembered.
