And she opened [the box] and saw the boy, and behold, he was crying, and she took pity on him and said, "This is a Hebrew boy." (Shemos 2:6)
Pharaoh's daughter Basya went down to the river to bathe, and she caught sight of a box floating among the bulrushes. She sent her attendants to fetch the box, opened it and saw a baby boy crying, and she said, "This is a Hebrew boy."
How did she know this? What made her conclude that the infant Moshe was a Hebrew child? It was not his appearance. It was not the sound of his crying. It was simply the conditions of his discovery. Why was a child adrift in a box on the river?
It must be that his parents were trying to save him from Pharaoh's decree of death to all male Jewish infants.
Basya's logic was excellent, and she guessed right. But it seems to have taken her a while to figure it out. As soon as she saw that the box contained a boy, she should have realized that he was Jewish. But apparently, this is not what happened. According to the Torah, she noticed that "he was crying, and she took pity on him" and only afterward did she say, "This is a Hebrew boy." What took her so long?
Rav Nissan Alpert offered a beautiful solution to this question in the context of his eulogy for his rebbi, Rav Moshe Feinstein. Rav Moshe was universally recognized as by far the greatest Torah scholar of his time. His knowledge was vaster than vast, his insight razor sharp and his humility, sensitivity and kindness legendary. One might have thought it would be very difficult for a young scholar to receive a haskamah, a letter of approbation, for a new sefer from such a towering sage, but just the opposite was true. Rav Moshe gave haskamos readily and easily to just about anyone who asked for them. He also gave letters of recommendation and letters of endorsement for all sorts of projects with the same ease. It came to the point that people were no longer impressed by a letter from Rav Moshe, so easy were they to come by. Why did he do this? Why wasn't he more discriminating when it came to writing letters on behalf of people?
Rav Alpert explained that chessed, kindness, and emes, truth, are not really compatible concepts. Kindness flows from the heart. It is an instinctive emotional response. Truth is established by the brain. It is the product of scrutiny, investigation and logic. In a certain sense, truth is the antagonist of kindness. If we would do a thorough investigation of poor people that ask for charity we would probably reject most of them.
Indeed, when chessed and emes are mentioned together in the Torah (Bereishis 24:49; Shemos 34:6; Yehoshua 2:14), the word chessed always precedes the word emes. Chessed is quick and instinctive. Emes is deliberate and thorough. If chessed would wait for emes, it would never get off the ground.
A person's first reaction must be kindness. Only afterward should he set off in search for the truth. When a beggar asks for a handout, don't wait until you check out his credentials. Give him something right away. When an institution needs financial assistance, don't call for an audit to determine exactly what the problem is. When a young author comes for an approbation, give it to him! This was Rav Moshe's philosophy in life.
When Basya opened the box and saw the boy, concludes Rav Alpert, her first reaction wasn't to assess the situation, to consider who the child's parents were and why he was adrift on the river, to determine if it would be appropriate to rescue him. Her first reaction was kindness. "He was crying, and she took pity on him." Before she gave any thought to the situation, her kind heart went out to the crying child. Only afterward did she stop to consider the situation, and she came to the correct conclusion that "this is a Hebrew boy."
