Chapter 29
Good Monday Morning to this week 29 of 2022
Now, you are leaving the desert behind.
You are thirsty, your people crying for water.
But I have no mind to roll on with you.
A new water-out-of-rock must be found.
Be the overflowing spring,
Or a cistern that doesn’t lose a drop.
Be the one who digs deep into desert sand.
Be water-out-of-rock
Rachel Adelmann
A Miriam’s Cup is a new ritual object that is placed on the seder table beside the Cup of Elijah. Miriam’s Cup is filled with water. It serves as a symbol of Miriam’s Well, which was the source of water for the Israelites in the desert. Putting a Miriam’s Cup on your table is a way of making your seder more inclusive.
As we know from Torah and as the liquid in her cup attests, the Prophet Miriam, has always been associated with water. It was Miriam who defied Pharaoh’s death sentence for male Hebrew infants, who placed baby Moses in the basket in the River Nile, a kind of birth canal that delivered him to Pharaoh’s daughter, who found and adopted him, assuring his survival.
It was Miriam who, at the shore of the Red Sea, “took a timbrel in her hand and all the women followed her, with timbrels and with dancing.” And who “sang to them,” leading them through the parted waters, not with hesitation and fear but with music and dancing.
It was because of the merit of Miriam that a miraculous well traveled with the Israelites, slaking their thirst during 40 years in the desert. After Miriam died, there was no water. God instructed Moses to speak to a rock, asking it for water, as perhaps Miriam had sung and spoken to the land they were traversing, asking it for water. Instead of speaking to the rock, Moses struck it — producing water.
Miriam is powerfully linked to all three water sources — river, sea and well — for good reason. Just as without water there would be no life on earth, without Miriam, there would be no Jewish life. Moses had to be kept alive. We have Miriam’s Nile rescue plan to thank for his survival. Without Miriam’s song and dance, there would have been no life-enhancing celebration of our redemption. Without Miriam’s Well, we would not have lived through our wanderings.
Rabbi Tamara Cohen writes; There is no set blessing over Miriam’s Cup but you might want to use the following declaration:
This is the Cup of Miriam, the cup of living waters. Let us remember the Exodus from Egypt. These are the living waters, God’s gift to Miriam, which gave new life to Israel as we struggled with ourselves in the wilderness. Blessed are You God, Who brings us from the narrows into the wilderness, sustains us with endless possibilities, and enables us to reach a new place.”
Wishing you a good start to this week as you have “your cup” filled!
Philemon