Let Miriam’s Cup Overflow at this year’s Seder!
How we will celebrate this year’s Passover Seder in Israel is still uncertain. Will we be interrupted dashing to shelters and safe rooms? Will families stay home and resort to COVID times Zoom Seders? Is there still a chance that we will feel safe enough to go back to our original plans, even though many have already been cancelled?
We will hold our Seders for sure! But we may find ourselves needing some inspiration beyond the traditional text. I know that I will. As we enter our fourth week of this war, I am fighting despair and exhaustion, with one fueling the other.
Since October 7th, 2023, we have been seeking comfort and hope in our Jewish texts along with witnessing the resilience of Israelis and the Jewish People world over. I need inspiration, models of courage and faith. This year, I am calling out to our foremother the Prophet Miriam and Miriam’s well to lead the way.
We first meet Miriam in Chapter One in Exodus, but not as Miriam. We encounter the “Miyaldot Ha’Ivriyot”, Shifra and Puah, the Hebrew midwives, who defy the decree of Pharaoh to kill baby boys willing to speak truth to power.
Who are they? Some rabbis of the midrash teach, they are actually, Yocheved and Miriam, the mother and sister of Moses.
Miriam will be named many chapters later at the Exodus from Egypt. The “sister of Moses” is watching over Moses in his basket in the Nile, when another unusual and defiant woman appears, also with no name. She is the daughter of Pharaoh, an Egyptian Princess, who models compassion for when she hears the cries of baby Moses, she decides to save him.
Our rabbis named the daughter of Pharaoh Bat-Paraoh…BAT-Yah, the daughter of God. They make her one of us! Determining that she went to the Nile to cleanse herself from her father’s idolatry, a mikvah if you will. In our Rabbis’ interpretation, she joined the Israelites. This is a reminder that even among our enemies, we can and must find the “daughters and sons” of God.
Miriam is named and called a prophet, מרים הנביאה as she leads the Israelite women out of Egypt, in song and dance. Miriam, our first dancer, probably made it in musical theater (an art form that Jews will later excel at), why else would the women take their timbrels to sing and dance as they left slavery, following Miriam, not afraid of the powerful enemy and protective of the vulnerable.
Miriam is overflowing, effervescent, a life force of optimism and hope. Miriam, the midwife, who helps to bring new life. I call Miriam, marat ha’yam…mistress of the waters. As a midwife, where she is well experienced with the Mai Shaphir, the amniotic fluid/waters, then at the Nile and then the Red Sea.
When she dies, suddenly the Israelites are without water! The rabbinic commentators surmise that she was the ongoing source of water in the wilderness throughout their 40 years. They imagine HER own traveling, overflowing well that gave waters of sustenance and even vegetation to the Israelites, as they wandered! Miriam was the source of life and quenching of thirst in the wilderness.
I was never taught much about Miriam. Some fifty years ago, Jewish feminists reclaimed her by adding Miriam’s cup to the Passover Seder table and filled with it water! And more important, Jewish feminists, reclaimed our role as religious leaders, not just a place at the table, but at the head of the table.
Miriam’s well, traveled in the wilderness. And it travelled through time. Now we are traveling BACK in time…to the days of Creation. According to Pirkai Avot (Ethics of the Fathers), a first century Rabbinic text filled with Rabbinic wisdom, the well was created right before the very first Shabbat, along with other miraculous and mysterious things; the rainbow, the manna, Bilaam’s talking donkey and more. Things that we cannot explain that will appear in Biblical stories and after, they were actually God’s last gifts at Creation.
But imagine centuries later, because our Rabbis did just that…Hagar, the banished handmaiden, the Other, that Abraham takes to procreate and Yishmael is born. Hagar means stranger, all alone, Hagar ha’ Mitzrit, Hagar the Egyptian, or Hagar who is in the narrow, scary place (metzar), because Sarah demanded that she be sent away.
Alone in the wilderness, Hagar despaired, without food or water, she set Yishmael under the bushes and wept. Then, God hears the cries of Yishmael, opens Hagar’s eyes to see a source of water to survive to go on living. “Hagar opened her eyes and saw a well. Genesis: Ch. 21:16-19.”
According to another Midrash (Pirkai D’Rabbi Eliezer) This well was actually Miriam’s well. The one, that was created hours before the very first Shabbat, will first appear to Hagar, the stranger, the other and provide nourishment and promise.
We despair; we have been in too many narrow places recently. We need to simply look up, to see the ever flowing well of possibility. Like Miriam, raise your timbrel when all around you is chaos, fear and despair. Miriam’s well is a source of healing and sustenance, her dancing across the Sea is her call to reach beyond ourselves and believe in a future we cannot see yet.
I am also calling out to some of our other remarkable foremothers, who displayed courage and resolve.
Rachel, our foremother, our suffering beauty, refused to submit to neat categories, we meet her first at a well, she is a shepherd, another quality of leadership. The one who leads her flock. There, she will enchant Jacob. Could we imagine that it was Miriam’s well, making another guest appearance, to change the course of our destiny. It will be our matriarch Rachel’s descendants, the Daughters of Zelophchad (from her son, Joseph) and Queen Esther (from her son, Benjamin) who anchor and redeem us and guarantee our survival. These women are our source of strength, courage and justice!
So, this Passover, place a beautiful cup with water right next to Elijah’s cup. Elijah is the symbol of the harkening of a Messianic era; Miriam’s cup reminds us of the work we can do today to bring that era closer.
