Moshe, Yirmiyahu, Gidon, and Spider Man

When Pharoah's daughter discovered a basket floating down the river, the Torah tells us, "VaTiftach va'tireyhu es ha'yeled," she opened the basket and saw a child, "V'hinei na'ar bocheh," and there was a lad/young man who was crying.  Rashi is troubled by the change in the description of who she saw/heard -- baby Moshe is described as a yeled, meaning a baby, and then as a na'ar, which is usually refers to an older child.  (Yosef as a teenager is described as a na'ar.)  Rashi explains the discrepancy by saying that baby Moshe, the yeled, had the voice of a na'ar, a more mature child.  Ramban takes issue with this interpretation, as it would be abnormal for a baby to have such a voice.  Ramban writes that it was not the tone of voice which the Torah is describing as being that of a na'ar, but rather it is the intensity of the crying.  Seforno writes that the cry was a purposeful cry, not the random crying of an infant.  Kli Yakar takes it a step further and suggests that Moshe was crying over the plight of Klal Yisrael, not a baby's crying for it's own needs. 

Obviously Kli Yakar is projecting onto baby Moshe some of what made mature Moshe into "Moshe Rabeinu" our leader, similar to the way Rashi explains that when Yocheved saw that her baby was "tov" it meant the house was filled with a special light, not just that this was a good baby.  I would contrast this stream of parshanut that sees Moshe's greatness as inherent from birth with interpretations like that of Maharal and Oznayim laTorah who write that Moshe's parents are described simple as a nameless "ish m'beis Levi" who married a "bas Levi" because these could be any man/any woman -- there was nothing inherently special about Moshe's family or background.  Greatness is achieved and earned and is therefore accessible to all, not bestowed or granted on a predetermined recipient.  L'havdil eleph havdalos and then some, one of the reasons Spider Man is such a great movie (I refer to the 2002 version, not the  garbage that came later) is because we get to watch Peter Parker, an ordinary teenager, grow into a superhero.  Modern readers/viewers like to watch our heroes develop, not appear fully formed, inherently gifted, from the get-go.  I don't know if readers in earlier ages shared that same preference.  In Tanach we find both models, e.g. Yirmiyahu is told by G-d that from conception he was chosen as a prophet, yet, we have heroes like the shofeit Gidon who seems far from the first , ideal choice to be a leader yet nonetheless he got the job.  It would be interesting to do a fuller study of the idea of a leader in Tanach and see which of these two models -- greatness inherent from birth vs greatness acquired over time or through struggle -- predominates.

Getting back to our story (we are getting to the good part), Chizkuni and others offer a different solution to the textual problem Rashi raised.  They suggest that yeled and na'ar refer to two different people: Moshe is the yeled who bas Pharoah sees in the basket; the na'ar who is crying is Aharon, who is distressed over his brother's plight.  R' Josh Hoffman a"h (netvort 5767) suggests a beautiful reading of the latter part of the pasuk in light of this Chizkuni.  "Va'tomer mi'yaldei ha'ivrim zeh" -- bas Pharoah recognized this as a Jewish child not because of seeing baby Moshe, but because she heard this na'ar bocheh, because she heard Aharon's crying!  Who else but a Jewish child would shed tears not because of his own needs, not because of his own suffering, but simply because he empathizes with the plight of a fellow Jewish baby.  Nosei b'ol im chaveiro is the hallmark of Klal Yisrael.