Moses

Moses

 

While the history of Judaism is filled with famous prophets and leaders-from Kings David and Solomon to the prophets Elijah and Ezekiel—no one man had more impact than did Moses, without whose guidance and leadership the modern Jewish religion would not exist. Something of a political heavyweight as a young man (having grown up in the Pharoah’s house and even being considered a shoo-in to ascend the throne one day) 

Moses apparently forsook all that and, being a Hebrew himself, decided to champion his own people in a quest to possess their own nation. This took him on something of a forty year odyssey, during which time he led—by some estimates—as many as a half-million men, woman, and children (though those numbers may be mistranslated or overblown), in a brutal trek to not only survive the harsh life of the desert, but restore the Jews to the land of Canaan. 

Supposedly responsible for penning the Torah (the most venerated of all Jewish writings and the basis for the first five books of the Old Testament), while Moses died—at the ripe old age of 120, no less—before  he could set foot in the promised land, it was he who gave the Jews the moral and ethical underpinnings that would constitute the next thousand years of Jewish thought. By way of example of just how important he was—and to some extent remains today—to western religion and philosophy is that his ten commandments (there were actually many more than ten but who’s counting) remain the bedrock of western religious belief to this day.