This weeks Parsha, Va'era, relates how G-d instructed Moses and his brother Aaron to meet with the mighty Egyptian king Pharaoh and order him to release the Jews from their slavery. In middle of the story, the Torah pauses to extensively detail the lineage of the two brothers, listing the names of their parents and grandparents, to the extent that much of the information is repeated a second time. In addition, Rashi, one of the main commentators on the Torah, reiterates that Yocheved gave birth to Moses and Aaron.
 
Reading and re-reading all these names, the question arises as to the relevance of the ancestry of Moses and Aaron to the current story, and why the additional emphasis on the fact that Yocheved bore these two sons to Amram their father, is necessary at this point in the Parsha. 
 
The answer is, that the Torah enumerates all this familial information to explain why Moses deserved to be the redeemer of the Jewish people. Most of his lifetime, Moses wasn't even in Egypt. He was living in the land of Midyan, where he married and settled with his wife and two children. What then was his connection to the Jews suffering in Egypt?
 
The key is his mother Yocheved. She was the Jewish midwife in Egypt who refused to follow Pharaoh's cruel decree to kill all the newborn baby boys, thereby enabling the continuance of the Jewish nation. As a reward for her self-sacrifice of defying the king's orders and helping Jewish mothers give birth to their children, her own sons, Moses and Aaron, were chosen by G-d to lead His people out of slavery.
 
The lesson learned is the importance of the education every parent gives their child by word and example. It was Yocheved's actions that enabled Moses to be the first leader of the Jewish nation, and it was she who gave him the necessary skills to be a leader that truly cared about each and every person. We must remember that our children will grow to emulate us, their parents, and mimic the behaviors they see. Let us make sure we live the morals and attitudes we want to cultivate in our children, and lead them on the proper path of maximizing their potential as a person and member of the eternal Jewish nation.
 
Shabbat Shalom