There is a story:
When God decided to redeem the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, he knew he would need a leader who was Israelite but who was never a slave. He thought about it, and decided he would have a baby taken to live in the palace, and chose Jochabed as the mother.
While she was pregnant, God consulted with her. He said "I have determined how he will never be a slave, but I don't know how he will know he is Jewish when the time comes."
"Oh," said Jochabed, "leave that to me. I will make sure he remembers."
When the baby Moses came back to Jochabed for her to nurse him, she made sure of three things. First, every evening she would sing him to sleep with "Rozhinkes mit Mandlin" (Raisins and Almonds).
And then, every Shabbos she made sure he was close to her when she lit the candles.
And finally, she made sure that when she made chicken soup for Shabbos, he was always in the kitchen with her so he would know the smell of it.
Well, Moses was weaned and went back to grow up in the palace as a prince. When he became a young man, he would sometimes go out to walk in the slave quarters in the evenings. One night he stopped to listen to a mother singing her baby to sleep. There was something familiar about the sound of it, but he couldn't quite remember where he had heard that song before.
Another evening as he walked through the slave quarters he was struck that in every house he passed there was a warm glow of candlelight. A warm feeling came over him; again he felt that there was something familiar, but again it was just out of his reach.
Well, once he went out earlier than usual on a Friday, and as he walked through the slave quarters there was a wonderful smell coming out of many of the houses. He stopped, and then it came to him. "I know! That's chicken soup! I'm Jewish!"
This is a wonderful story; we can picture the people telling it imagining our ancestors in Egypt living the life of the shtetl, speaking -and singing- Yiddish, somehow finding a way into the story to identify the problem of needing to remember who you are.
More seriously, the story of Moses is a story of diaspora, of never quite belonging. He is the Jew who was never a slave; he is the exile in Midian after killing the Egyptian overseer; he is the leader who cannot speak in public without Aaron's help. And, as an adopted child, he is always skeptical - not only is he the one prophet to whom God speaks directly, he insists on seeing God - though not this week. This week he only insists that God tell him His name.
What does it mean when the central story of a people is a story of redemption? When the central hero of a people is a deeply flawed and lonely man?
As the book of Shemot continues, let us think about these things, and try to remember who we are and where we come from.