Connecting with Biblical Characters
- Rabbi Heather Miller
- Mar 2, 2025
- 3 min read
Newsletter March 3rd, 2025 Together, we're #keepingitsacred...
The Oscars were celebrated here in Los Angeles last night. The epic evening honors those who bring to life stories. Stories of challenge and triumph. Stories of tragedy and comedy. Stories of journey and soul-searching. Stories that connect us to our humanity.
In the ancient world, there were no TVs or movie theatres— so what filled this purpose was scripture. There, a person could find tales of biblical heroes whose humanity reflected our own. Characters who we could connect with; characters within whom we could see reflections of ourselves.
Quintessential among those characters was Moses, whose birthday we celebrate this Thursday night— the 7th of Adar. His activities have been discussed for thousands of years, learned and debated among our people’s laypeople and scholars alike.
Though he lived 3,000 years ago, and was a man, and lived halfway around the world from where I sit right now, I am humanized reading his story. I understand his lack of confidence. I feel his complex family dynamics. I sense his trials, and I rejoice in his triumphs. To name a few of the many defining moments of his life that I feel for deeply:
His name, “Moses,” means “drawn from the water,” reflecting the fact that he was pulled out of the water by Pharaoh’s daughter and raised in the palace. Only later did he find out he was actually an Israelite. How did he feel about his adopted family when he found out? Did it change the way he related to them? And how did he feel about his relationship with his biological siblings and parents as he came to know them?
He had a hard time talking with his people— the text tells us he had a stutter or other speech impediment. I wonder if he just didn’t know or know well the language of the Hebrews— how did he feel about his life part of two very different worlds?
His tender heart and deep sense of justice led him to strike (and kill) a slavemaster to protest treatment of an enslaved Hebrew, and later strike a rock in frustration with the very people he had helped liberate. How did he feel about his fiery heart getting the better of him in his youth and again in his later life?
He stood up to pharaoh and was a conduit for God’s plagues ten times. He saw the gut wrenching suffering of the people he had known his whole life. Suffering for the stubbornness of the pharaoh. Did he ever wonder if there was some secret magical way to penetrate pharaoh’s hardened heart that he wasn’t accessing? Did he feel like it was his fault on some level that pharaoh wasn’t getting the message those first nine times?
I have so many questions about Moses because I connect with his humanity. The story is beautifully told in the Torah. It is of course famously also told beautifully in the Oscar-winning movie from 1957, The Ten Commandments. But that’s the magic of movies. And that can also be the magic of the Bible.
At Keeping It Sacred, we explore these to connect with the text, ourselves, and each other every time we log on. This is how we’re keeping it sacred.
Together, we’re #keepingitsacred…
Rabbi Heather Miller,
Founder, Keeping It Sacred
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