Moshe Rabbenu is, according to Jewish tradition, the greatest of the prophets of Israel and the first leader of the Jewish people. The son of Amram and Yocheved of the tribe of Levi, he was born in Egypt at a time when Pharaoh had decreed that every newborn boy be cast into the Nile. His mother hid him for three months and then placed him in a basket among the reeds of the river. Pharaoh's daughter, whom the Midrash identifies as Bityah, found him, named him Moshe, "because I drew him out of the water," and raised him in the palace; his sister Miriam offered to find a Hebrew nurse for him, and so the child was returned to his own mother.

He spent many years in Midian, where he married Tzipporah, daughter of Yitro, and tended his father-in-law's flocks. At the age of eighty, at the command of God who had revealed Himself to him at the burning bush, he returned to Egypt and demanded that Pharaoh free the Children of Israel. After the Ten Plagues he led them out of Egypt and across the Sea of Reeds, and transmitted the Torah to them at Mount Sinai.

Throughout the forty years of wandering in the wilderness he led an often rebellious people. After the episode of the waters of Merivah, he was barred from entering the Land of Israel. The Torah says of him: "Now the man Moshe was very humble, more than any man on the face of the earth" (Numbers 12:3), and: "There has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like Moshe, whom the Lord knew face to face" (Deuteronomy 34:10). Maimonides made belief in his prophecy the seventh of the Thirteen Principles of Faith.

According to tradition (Kiddushin 38a, Sotah 12b), he was born and passed away on 7 Adar. After blessing the tribes, he died at the age of one hundred and twenty in the land of Moab, having beheld the Promised Land from the summit of Mount Nebo. He was buried in the valley opposite Beit Peor, and "no man knows his burial place to this day" (Deuteronomy 34:6).