Seasons are tricky business in the Jewish calendar. Traditionally, our spiritual year begins in autumn in the month of Tishrei, but a case can also be made that the month of Nissan is the first month of the calendar. Spring has always represented birth and rebirth. Nowhere is this rebirth more apparent than during the holiday of Passover when God liberated the Hebrews from their bondage in Egypt and turned a people into a nation.
For me, it is impossible to imagine spring without Passover. Though I have never felt that kashering a house for Pesach was a holy event, I can say that after years of maniacal cleaning, I find some innate satisfaction in the job. But of course, Passover really doesn’t begin until Seder time. We assiduously follow the Haggadah’s order of service, but it is the round table discussions from which I draw the most meaning. As a person who makes her living by telling stories, the interpretations of the text gets my creative juices flowing.
The women of the bible have dozens of didactic attributes that teach us specific lessons. For example, from Sarah, we learn about kindness and the mitzvah of hachnasat orchim, how to welcome guests. From Rebecca, we are taught a mother’s sacrifice for the good of a nation. When she and Jacob use guile to ensure Isaac’s blessing, Rebecca is forced to send her beloved son into exile in order to escape Esau’s wrath. According to the Midrash, Rachel and Leah illustrate the ultimate in sisterly love. Jacob had wanted to marry Rachel, but he was sure that his father-in-law was going to trick him into marrying Leah. Since veils were opaque in biblical days, Jacob had taught Rachel specific hand signals so that he could identify her at the altar. Rachel loved Jacob, but she abhorred the thought of embarrassing her older sister. With self-sacrifice, she taught her sister the secret hand signals.
There is much discourse about the mothers of the bible, yet there is a great deal to learn from biblical women beyond the Matriarchs. I would like to take a few sentences to address the primary woman of the Exodus, the prophetess Miriam.
The beginning of the book of Exodus explains how the Jews in Egypt went from temporary sojourners to slaves. Several paragraphs later, the Chumash segues into the birth of Moses, God’s emissary in the Jewish redemption. Moses had help in his mission from his two siblings, Aaron and Miriam. His brother’s help was evident during Moses’ dealings with Pharaoh, but his sister’s aid began even before Moses was born.
When Pharaoh issued his evil decrees, culminating in the murder of all Jewish male babies, the Midrash says that it was the Jewish women, specifically Miriam, a little, twelve-year-old yenta, who talked her parents into reuniting sexually. This action produced Moses, a child born with light radiating from his soul. Though it has been said that Moses never cried or fussed, his Godly essence lit up the family domicile, attracting the attention of the Egyptians during the dark, preelectrical nights. These spiritual beams eventually became dangerous to his family’s existence.
Eventually, it became necessary to cast the baby in a homemade ark upon the waters of the Nile to keep his existence a secret. Again, it was Miriam who ensured Moses’ survival, waiting until the Egyptian princess found him. Then the young girl, imbued with amazing verve, took it a step farther by securing a wet nurse for her baby brother – their mother, Yocheved.
I have always found that I could relate to Miriam, starting with the fact that her name is part of my Hebrew name. As a fellow yenta, I admire her plucky spirit, her willingness to stick her neck out and her powers of persuasion. She was a multi-faceted woman: a devoted wife, daughter and sister, as well as a prophetess. It was due to her merit that the children of Israel were given water in the desert. Any one of those aforementioned attributes provides material sufficient for a thesis, but there is another aspect of Miriam that is often overlooked.
In Miriam, we have our first Jewish female of the arts.
When the Jews crossed the Red Sea, the men sang Shirat Hayam – a long and beautiful poem about God’s abundance of kindness and mercy. This ode of praise is a specific type of poem, a spontaneous outburst of emotion from the heart. It was the essence of creativity because it was not rewritten nor was it edited. No forethought or deliberation interrupted the direct connection between what was felt and what was spoken or sung.
So what were the women doing while the men were singing? The biblical text says explicitly that Miriam picked up her tambourine and led the women in dancing. This was not a choreographed, step-by-step, tap dance routine, but spontaneous movement of joy, much like the dancing done by King David upon receiving the ark of the holy covenant. Nor was Miriam content to take a physical, but silent role in her praise of God. She sang her own Shirah, her own heartfelt ode to the marvels of Hashem.
As far as I can tell, Miriam was the first woman in the Chumash itself to communicate with God via song and dance. I find this amazing, and I find it inspirational. Though we are known as the People of the Book, we are also very much the People of the Heart.
I find that writing a novel is a wonderful combination between left and right brain, between conscious thought and creativity. Often language flows directly from my brain to my hands without my eyes seeing words. Essentially I could write blindfolded. I’m not saying that sight is not important. The feedback that comes from reading my words is ever so important in the editing process, but of little consequence when I first put thought to page. Writing a crime fiction novel depends on total integration of the brain. It includes logic, ingenuity, and more than a little faith. I say that because when penning mysteries, I often paint myself into corners. But experience, inventiveness and relaxation have taught me not to worry. After twenty years, I now feel comfortable letting ideas come to me rather than consciously think about getting the proper ideas.
I see my belief in Judaism much the same way I view the process of writing. It is a beautiful melding of art (ideas), law (grammar, sentence structure and syntax) and faith (the ability to incorporate art and law to create original thought). And no person exemplifies this better than the prophetess Miriam. She was a role model in her time and continues to be a role model for all future generations.