Moe Berg: Baseball Player and Secret Agent

The Ivy League-trained linguist and lawyer, professional baseball player and American spy was an enigma in life — and he remains so. Somehow, a number of Berg's documents entered the collections of the National Library of Israel.

A 1933 Goudey baseball card featuring Morris "Moe" Berg of the Washington Senators alongside a letter written by Berg to his family in 1932 during a trip to Japan. The letter is among a number of Berg's documents kept at the National Library of Israel.

Moe Berg could be in Jerusalem right now.

Then again, Berg might be in Tokyo, where he shot moving images during a visit in 1934, film he gave to the U.S. government that he figured helped American military planners fighting the Japanese in World War II. Or in Europe, where Berg spied for the U.S. Office of Strategic Services, an intelligence agency that evolved into the Central Intelligence Agency, during the war. Or at the sites of American stadiums, where he played baseball in the major leagues for 15 seasons. Or back in Manhattan, where Berg was born in 1902, earned a law degree at Columbia University and won quiz contests on national radio programs; or New Jersey, where he earned a bachelor’s degree at Princeton University, lived much of his life and died in 1972.

More likely, Berg is in all of those places simultaneously, the winds having long ago exiled his ashes from Jerusalem’s Mount Scopus, where his sister Ethel scattered them.

That was 50 years ago, and either on that visit or in 1975 Ethel Berg donated some of Moe’s papers and photographs to the National Library of Israel — or to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where the NLI was housed at the time. NLI’s archives don’t reveal how the Bergiana ended up in its possession.

It’s probably just as the secretive Berg would have preferred.

Moe Berg, who played baseball in the major leagues for 15 seasons and later became a spy for the U.S. government. Photo from the Morris Berg Collection at the National Library of Israel

An article published in 2016 by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum quoted legendary manager Casey Stengel as hailing Berg’s smooth transition early in his career from shortstop to catcher, baseball’s most difficult fielding position. Stengel then added: “[N]obody ever knew his life’s history. I call him the mystery catcher. Strangest fellah who ever put on a uniform.”

Berg may have been odd, but he excelled in the sport. Mock his .243 lifetime batting average if you wish — various versions of a popular joke at the time among fellow ballplayers held that Berg could speak multiple languages but couldn’t hit a curveball in any of them — but Berg’s playing tenure at baseball’s highest level far exceeded the norm then or now. He played for the 1933 American League champions, the Washington Senators. Members of the Boston Red Sox in the early 1940s cited his acumen as a coach for that team.

In the authoritative biography of Berg, Nicholas Dawidoff’s The Catcher Was a Spy, outfielder Dom DiMaggio wondered why such an intelligent man, who was one of his coaches in Boston after Berg concluded his playing career there, worked in professional baseball.

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One of the photos of Moe Berg donated by his sister Ethel following his death in 1972. The Morris Berg Collection at the National Library of Israel

In addition to Berg’s playing experience — catcher is considered a thinking man’s position because of its constant decision-making consider the baseball knowledge he absorbed in conversations with just some of his teammates and managers, who included such all-time greats as Walter Johnson, Jimmie Foxx, Lefty Grove and Ted Williams.

As it was, baseball’s nomadic lifestyle — sports teams spend half of every season on the road — might have shaped Berg’s later pursuits in espionage and his inability to put down roots.

Berg, who was Jewish, visited the Land of Israel at least once, in early 1933, during his return from a visit to Japan with other major league players. Dawidoff’s book mentioned that Berg visited the Sea of Galilee, the Jordan River and the Valley of Jehoshaphat outside Jerusalem’s Old City, but said nothing about Berg’s impressions of those places or others in the country – or of Berlin later in the trip, the day Hitler became chancellor of Germany.

Once his baseball career wound down following his stint as a coach, Berg began working for the U.S. government in 1942.

The biography posits that in 1969, Berg – who implied that he was still working for the CIA at the time— “probably” played a role in providing Israel with 100 military helicopters, and might have met Prime Minister Golda Meir at that point.

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One of the photos of Moe Berg donated by his sister Ethel following his death in 1972. The Morris Berg Collection at the National Library of Israel

What’s clear is that Berg, for all of his embellishments, played a role in American espionage during a critical period in history. He was even assigned to assassinate a leading German physicist and Nobel Prize winner, Werner Heisenberg, in Zurich in December 1944 if Heisenberg indicated during a lecture there that Berlin was close to developing an atomic bomb. Heisenberg didn’t, so Berg’s pistol stayed in his pocket (see Heisenberg’s War by Thomas Powers, pp. 391–392).

Berg’s contributions were such that in 1945 he was selected for the Medal of Freedom, an award going to Americans safeguarding the country’s national security. Berg declined the award, and Ethel accepted it on her brother’s behalf following his death.

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Moe Berg writes home from his trip to Japan with a delegation of baseball players in 1932. The Morris Berg Collection at the National Library of Israel

The NLI’s file provides some insight into Berg’s life. The main item is a 12-page letter to his family that Berg wrote on Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel stationery on November 9, 1932, when he was still a ballplayer. Berg wrote about the hotel (it was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright), where his roommate was future Hall of Famer Ted Lyons; the local custom of bowing in greeting; Japanese food (“raw fish to dip in soy sauce (very tasty)”); words (“OCHA = tea”); geisha shows (“the dances are more or less poses — instead of motion”); hygiene (“the Japanese … bathe in extremely hot water once or twice every day”); women’s shoes (he drew two diagrams); kimonos; traffic control; Tokyo’s Ginza (a boulevard he nicknamed “the Ginzberg”); and baseball (the American players had come to run clinics for teams representing six universities).

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“raw fish to dip in soy sauce (very tasty)” – Berg elaborated on Japanese food during his trip in 1932. The Morris Berg Collection at the National Library of Israel

Berg later that month typed short remarks he delivered in English on Radio Tokyo. “I hope an innocent adventure like ours [the baseball tour] will turn out to be a scoop of diplomacy without portfolio,” he wrote of his stay in Japan.

Strangely enough, he all but ignored the biggest news in his homeland: the presidential election the day before. Berg’s last words before signing off were only these: “heard Roosevelt won — lucky.”

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Moe Berg noted his impressions of Latin American societies and the ability of sports to bridge cultural differences. Berg was sent to the region in 1942. The Morris Berg Collection at the National Library of Israel

A document in the National Library’s collection that Berg wrote in about 1942 apparently preceded his first undercover assignment, as a sports ambassador in Latin America under the aegis of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs – a U.S. government agency tasked with countering Italian and German propaganda efforts in Latin America. It consists of two pages of Berg’s typed notes about sports’ ability to bridge cultural differences.

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A letter from Nelson Rockefeller notifying Moe Berg that his contract with the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs wasn’t being renewed. The Morris Berg Collection at the National Library of Israel
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Neslon Rockefeller thanks Berg for congratulating him on winning New York’s gubernatorial election. The Morris Berg Collection at the National Library of Israel

On May 17, 1943, his boss at the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs sent a letter stating that Berg’s contract wasn’t being renewed. The boss was the agency’s head, future Vice President Nelson Rockefeller. A November 26, 1958, letter signed by Rockefeller thanked Berg for congratulating Rockefeller on winning New York’s gubernatorial election.

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Moe Berg is seen here wearing a suit and a hat alongside two uniformed soldiers. Beside them is a shorter person, perhaps a child… and a goat. The Morris Berg Collection at the National Library of Israel

The two letters are also preserved at the National Library of Israel, as are four black-and-white photographs. One picture shows Berg wearing a suit and a hat and standing in a field with two uniformed soldiers, one of whom is smoking. Beside them is a shorter person, perhaps a child, who is holding a leash.

The animal on the leash is a goat. Where the snapshot was taken, who the three people are with Berg and why a goat is in the picture — well, we just don’t know.

Maybe Berg’s CIA file can tell us.

Writer-editor Hillel Kuttler can be reached at [email protected].

From Ben Shemen to the Concentration Camp and Back: The Story of a Family Photo

One photograph. That’s what Sarah Kagan left behind at the concentration camp in Klooga. But sometimes one picture is all you need to have closure on a painful chapter in a family's history.

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The Linkovsky family in Kovno (Kaunas). The photo was found among the ruins of the Klooga concentration camp and is now held at Yad Vashem

Family. Young men and women who share DNA or marital ties, and three little children, all of them smiling for a photographer, frozen in one moment in time and in a single place: Kovno, 1939. Just a few months before the whole world turned upside down. Ostensibly, this is a perfectly ordinary family picture, one of millions kept in the Yad Vashem photographic collections, each commemorating entire worlds which once were and are no more. But behind this specific picture is a broader story, written in part on the picture itself.

Writing on the back of the picture. Photo kept at Yad Vashem

On the other side of the photograph is a brief message written in Yiddish, in Hebrew script:

“A gift for the entire family, from your brother and the granddaughter,

Avraham

Daliah

Linkovsky

May 18, 1939

Ben Shemen”

How did a picture reach the distant concentration camp in Estonia from a Zionist youth village in the Land of Israel? Who were Avraham and Daliah Linkovsky and what was their connection to the people in the photograph?

To see the big picture, we have to go back a bit.

In the 1920s, a terrible tragedy befell the Linkovsky family living in Kovno: they lost both their parents. The father’s death certificate can be found at Yad Vashem, but the mother apparently also died before the war. The older brothers each went their own way, even if earlier than expected. But the two younger brothers – Avraham and Pesha – were sent to the Jewish orphanage in the city. This fact, which must have seemed particularly tragic at the time, ended up saving their lives.

Children at the Kovno orphanage. From the Ben Shemen Youth Village Archive, IL-BSYV-001-13-0102-02

The Kovno Jewish orphanage, or the Kinderhaus as it was known then, was founded and run by the German-Jewish educator Siegfried Lehman. Lehman came to Kovno at the request of Max Soloveichik – the Jewish Affairs Minister for the Lithuanian government. Lehman was an inspiring figure who dreamt of equal, collective education. He eventually became an enthusiastic Zionist, though he didn’t start out that way, and made Aliyah in 1926 to found what would become the Youth Village of Ben Shemen – an educational institution which served as a home for the children who grew up there.

Dr. Siegfried Lehman. Photo: Ben Shemen Archive, IL-BSYV-001-13-0102-01

He didn’t come alone. With him came the first class of students for this new youth village – the children of the Kovno Kinderhaus. Later, two more groups of children came from Kovno, mixing in with native-born “Sabra” children as well as kids who were later rescued from Europe and brought to Mandatory Palestine by the Youth Aliyah organization.

Avraham Linkovsky’s Aliyah certificate. Photo courtesy of the Ben Shemen Archive

One of the first groups to arrive included the orphans Avraham and Pasha Linkovsky. Avraham was sixteen years old, Pasha fourteen. Pictures from Ben Shemen show them with their friends and teachers who became their family. But they never entirely forgot their old family in Lithuania, and kept in contact via correspondence. Upon completing their studies, Avraham married Sarah (of the Warful family) and they stayed in the country to work at the youth village. They had a daughter, whom they named Daliah.

In the spring of 1939, the young family travelled to visit their relatives in Lithuania. Avraham and Sarah took Daliah to meet their uncles and aunts in distant Kovno, people she would see only once in her life, when she was too small to remember. As a reminder of their trip before heading back, they all took a picture together. A fence passed behind them, behind which was a river or fields. A European landscape. What were they thinking when posing for this picture? Did they think this might be their last meeting?

Picture kept at Yad Vashem

The picture apparently belonged to Avraham, and he took it back with him to the Land of Israel, where he developed the photo and sent it as a gift to his brother back in Kovno, as a souvenir. Did he keep a copy for himself? We don’t know.

Meanwhile, the war broke out. Avraham would never hear from his brother or sisters again, murdered in the Holocaust that engulfed European Jewry. For many years, the family left in the Land of Israel didn’t even know the exact details of when and where they died.

But the picture, the souvenir sent from the Land of Israel to Europe before it went up in flames, survived, and it tells us the story of the family that was lost.

In 1944, the Russians liberated Estonia from the Germans. Among other sites, they reached the remains of the Klooga concentration camp. This camp was established in 1943 as one of the work camps meant to exploit the area’s natural resources. Prisoners were mostly sent from the ghettos of Vilna (Vilnius) and Kovno.

But when the Russians finally came to “liberate” the camp, there wasn’t much to free. A few days before the arrival of the Red Army, as they heard the approaching Russian guns echoing in the distance, the German camp commanders understood that this was the end of the line for them. Together with local collaborators, they murdered all the prisoners, tying them to tree branches to entirely burn the bodies and erase any trace of the horrors that took place there. But perhaps due to haste or the weather, the fire didn’t spread to all the bodies, most of which remained intact.

The Russians found piles of corpses, still warm, a strong scent of burnt flesh, as well as piles of documents and photographs. Within this inferno and the horror covered in ash, pages and fragments of documents remained which would tell, silently, the story of those who perished there.

Among them was this photo, with the writing which clearly tied it to people who were still alive at the time. Those people being family members waiting in the Land of Israel and hearing of the worst from afar. Aside from this picture, other hints were found: Eliyahu Linkovsky’s death certificate (dated to many years before the war, a testament to the early orphanhood of the brothers) as well as the marriage certificate of Avraham’s sister, also named Sarah, and Yehudah Kagan. Sarah Kagan’s name was found on the prisoners’ roster, no. 856.

The connection between the siblings was apparently cut off in 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union. From this point on, we can only guess, based on the stories of other survivors from that area, what Sarah went through. The crowding in the ghetto. The hunger. The death. The fear. The orders from the Germans to quickly pack their things: how to choose what to take from home, knowing how unlikely it was they’d return? The nightmarish trip to the concentration camps, the confiscation of everything she brought once she came to the German offices. The certificates. And the pictures.

They came with her, in her pockets or under her underclothes, but they didn’t stay with her.

They were left behind, to tell others a little more of what was and is no more.

Avraham, who was able to raise a model family in the Land of Israel, was never able to see the picture again or hear this story. The Russians eventually passed along the archival material of what is now known as the “Klooga Collection” at Yad Vashem, but only after he passed away.

Among the thousands of documents and pictures, the picture would probably have remained in the shadows, an anonymous item in the Yad Vashem collection. But one scholar, Orit Adorian, did not rest until she succeeded, together with the veteran staff members who run the Ben Shemen Youth Village Archive, in giving the family closure.

The items appearing in the article are preserved at the Ben Shemen Youth Village Archive and are made available thanks to the collaboration between the archive, the Ministry of Heritage, and the National Library of Israel.

Special thanks to Orit Adorian for sharing her part in the story and helping us prepare the article.

How the Inmates of a Concentration Camp Celebrated the Festival of Freedom

Despite the lack of food, the threat of deportation, and the difficult prison conditions, Jewish prisoners at the Gurs concentration camp in southern France insisted on celebrating Passover at any price. One of them wrote the Haggadah they read from by hand – from memory.

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1941 was a difficult year for the Jewish People. This was the year in which the persecution and discrimination which was their lot since Hitler rose to power formed into the “final solution” for erasing the Jewish People and its memory entirely – in Nazi-occupied Europe and the whole world. This was also the year in which the first death camp was established on Polish soil, in the city of Chelmno.

In that same cursed year, on a different war front, prisoners of the Gurs concentration camp in southern France gathered to celebrate the Jewish festival of freedom – Passover. When evening came, the men – husbands, brothers, and sons – arrived in the women’s barracks. There, with empty hands and full hearts, they held a Seder. “And soon the old and pleasant tune of this night echoed: “Ha Lachma Anya” [Poor Man’s Bread]. There was no meat and wine for the holiday meal, but thanks to the initiative of one of the prisoners, these persecuted Jews had a Haggadah with which to celebrate.

First page of the Gurs camp Haggadah

Aryeh Ludwig Zuckerman had been imprisoned at Gurs for over a year. At this camp near the Spanish border, some thirty people died from hunger and disease every day. In the face of the suffering and the despair of the twelve thousand Jews imprisoned at Gurs, Zuckerman decided to take action that Passover.

Zuckerman was every inch an educator, and was known as one of the most energetic figures in the camp. He organized Torah and shop classes, as well as cultural activities that included plays and concerts performed by denizens of the camp. Zuckerman was also one of the managers of the camp clinic and its Chevra Kadisha burial society.

He wanted all the prisoners in the camp to have something for the approaching holiday of Passover. Since they had no way of securing food, he took responsibility for matters of the spirit and worked on writing the Haggadah in Hebrew letters.

Indeed, he wrote the Haggadah in his own handwriting and from memory (as can be seen from a number of errors he made). His daughter recalled how he engraved the whole Haggadah in Hebrew letters, aside from the songs at the end of the Haggadah, which were engraved in Latin letters.

According to Rabbi Leo Ansbacher, a fellow prisoner who helped Zuckerman put out the Haggadah, Zuckerman wasn’t able to write it all down. As Passover approached, he rushed to send it to Rabbi Shmuel René Kappel. The Rabbi, a chaplain of the French Army Corps, took Zuckerman’s papers to Toulouse and had it printed in thousands of copies.

Rabbi Leo Ansbacher, Gurs Camp, 1941-2,
Yad Vashem, Photographic Archive b 926/5

In an anonymous testimony written after Passover of 1941, one of the prisoners remembered the enormous difficulty of celebrating the Festival of Freedom in conditions of terrible uncertainty. The anonymous witness told of how the “feast” of this seder was poorer than anyone had ever seen.

“Many received, in addition to the matzah, a little salad instead of maror, charoset, and an egg. Only some of the people got to eat a meal, albeit in tiny portions. There were those who were fortunate and received food packages, and then shared the food fairly among all those seated.”

But what they lacked in the material, they made up for in spirit. The thousands of prisoners in the camp insisted on adhering to tradition even in the face of the death that was all around them. Thanks to them and the work of Zuckerman, Ansbacher, and their partners, the spirit of the holiday was maintained, and there was even a sense of hope:

“A refreshing April night and moist spring wind descended on the dark lanes between the shacks. From within the shacks, lights burst forth and voices were heard saying the blessing after the meal and singing. The song of the words sung and heard innumerable times, was the song of the uplifting of the spirit, of consolation and hope.”

The song Chad Gadya in Latin letters, the Gurs Haggadah

The next morning, Rabbi Ansbacher received irregular permission to conduct the Passover holiday prayers in the camp yard. The Rabbi held the prayer in the open air and also gave a sermon with words of consolation to the camp prisoners during the Yizkor prayers for the dead.

The painter Fritz Schleicher was there to immortalize the event (below). He himself was murdered in Auschwitz on October 5, 1942.

On May 1942, Zuckerman understood that the Jews were being deported east to Poland. He and Rabbi Ansbacher, together with the Jewish leadership in the camp, worked to smuggle the camp’s Jews out before they could be sent to the death camps there.  Thanks to his friendship with the man in charge of burial for non-Jews in the camp, a friendship he’d formed as part of his work in the Chevra Kadisha, Zuckerman was smuggled out of the camp together with his family inside of a coffin. After making it out, he took care to find a hiding place for them in the forests in the south of Belgium. After doing so, he joined the Belgian underground to fight the Germans. He died in Belgium in 1958.

Rabbi Ansbacher was seized earlier and imprisoned. He was on the list of those to be deported, but managed somehow to escape and find shelter in Spain – where he survived.

The Passover Haggadah of the Gurs camp is one of two Haggadahs written in southern France during the Holocaust in the period of the Vichy regime. In 1999, Yad Vashem republished it to retell the story to new generations.

On May 1942, Zuckerman understood that the Jews were being deported east to Poland. He and Rabbi Ansbacher, together with the Jewish leadership in the camp, worked to smuggle the camp’s Jews out before they could be sent to the death camps there.  Thanks to his friendship with the man in charge of burial for non-Jews in the camp, a friendship he’d formed as part of his work in the Chevra Kadisha, Zuckerman was smuggled out of the camp together with his family inside of a coffin. After making it out, he took care to find a hiding place for them in the forests in the south of Belgium. After doing so, he joined the Belgian underground to fight the Germans. He died in Belgium in 1958.

Rabbi Ansbacher was seized earlier and imprisoned. He was on the list of those to be deported, but managed somehow to escape and find shelter in Spain – where he survived.

The Passover Haggadah of the Gurs camp is one of two Haggadahs written in southern France during the Holocaust in the period of the Vichy regime. In 1999, Yad Vashem republished it to retell the story to new generations.

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Further Reading

The Gurs Haggadah: Passover in Perdition, edited by Bella Gutterman and Naomi Morgenstern, translated from the Hebrew by Nechama Kanner, editing by Yaacov Peterseil. Jerusalem: Devora Pub, Yad Vashem

Let’s Raise a Glass for Miriam the Prophetess

What was Miriam the Prophetess’ part in the Exodus from Egypt? How does the Jewish Midrash explain her role in the journey from slavery to freedom and why do some set aside a sixth cup for her at the Passover Seder table?

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Postcard reproducing the work of German artist Ludwig Gustav Wilhelm Scheuermann (1859-1911), presenting the biblical image of Miriam, sister of Moses, holding a musical instrument. The Postcard collection, the National Library of Israel

As opposed to the Passover Haggadah, the Jewish Midrash tells us of the significant role played by Miriam the Prophetess in the Exodus from Egypt. Every Passover we are told of the Children of Israel’s journey from slavery to freedom, but it often goes unmentioned that Miriam the Prophetess, sister of Moses, had a significant role in that journey from Egypt to the Promised Land. These acts earn her, in some traditions, a place of honor at the Seder table.

What was Miriam the Prophetess’ role in the Exodus?

The Exodus is remembered in Jewish tradition as a rapid departure, almost a hasty flight, from Egypt. Thus, the Jews left the country so fast that they didn’t have time to properly bake bread, leading to the matzas we eat during the holiday instead.

We can imagine our ancestors quickly leaving their homes and barely managing to take food with them, grabbing what they could and getting out. It therefore seems very strange that just after the Red Sea is split in two and the People of Israel cross over to the other side, the Bible describes Miriam the Prophetess taking her timbrel and starting to play and dance.

“And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances.”

(Ex. 15)
Anselm Feuerbach painting, 1862. Displayed at the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin

Where did Miriam manage to find a timbrel in the middle of the desert – did she take the time to bring it along during the hasty exit from Egypt?

When you are forced to leave as quickly as possible, you only take what you really need with you. It’s certainly logical to bring along that which is required to survive in the desert – food, water, clothes. Why did Miriam choose to bring a timbrel – a musical instrument akin to a modern tambourine? In his commentary, Rashi describes how Miriam and all the other Israelite women, during the challenging, complex, and even terrifying moments of the departure from Egypt, still believed there would be reasons for happiness, dancing, and merriment. “The righteous women in that generation were confident that God would perform miracles for them and they accordingly had brought timbrels with them from Egypt” [Rashi, Ex. 15:20]. Therefore, Miriam brought a timbrel with her on the journey. She knew she would have the opportunity to use it.

A photo of The Golden Haggadah, Barcelona, 1320. The Center for Jewish Art at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

This is the unique strength which characterizes Miriam’s leadership throughout the Exodus: the power to believe that the painful reality can reverse itself. The power to try and bring about change, to imagine a better reality than the present one and to strive to realize it.

According to the Midrash, the entire redemption, all of the Exodus, was based on Miriam’s act of rescue. The Talmudic story tells us that when Pharaoh decreed that all the newborn boys be thrown into the Nile, her father Amram, a great leader in his generation, divorced his wife Yocheved, deciding that if the children were to be murdered anyway, then there was no point in having them and thus no point in being married.

The people followed suit and divorced their wives, too. A moment after Pharaoh’s terrible decree, the Talmud describes how despair gripped the people, with families collapsing wholesale.

It was in this atmosphere of doom that Miriam emerged as a leader: “His daughter said to him: Father, your decree is harsher than that of Pharaoh” (TB Sotah 12a). Miriam appeals to her father and reproaches him: your decree is harsher, as he only condemned the males, while you are also condemning the females. He is wicked and so his decree will ultimately be abolished. But you are ensuring the decree will be realized by your own hand.

Amram, a leader of the generation, is able to heed his daughter’s innocent, seemingly naïve voice, and decides to remarry his former wife, after which Moses is born. It is for this moment that the Jewish sages describe Miriam as a Prophetess: As a young girl, she saw beyond the immediate need for survival, beyond the here and now, and led to the birth of the People of Israel’s great leader. In a difficult moment of existential danger, Miriam managed to foresee the horizon beyond and believe in a better future. Operating within a difficult reality, she refused to give up.

Moses Abandoned on the Nile, by Paul Delaroche

When Moses was placed inside the basket, her mother doubted her and asked “My daughter, where is your prophecy?” (Ex. Rabbah 1). He and his wife were helpless and despairing. They sat at home, and the sorrow for their son filled their hearts. But again, Miriam refused to play along. She went to the river and made sure Moses found a home with Pharaoh’s daughter, taking care to ensure her prophecy came true.

Miriam’s strength came through in these moments, when despair seemed to be overtaking belief in the good.

Later on, as the People of Israel wandered the desert, the Jewish sages speak of how Miriam had a well, one containing flowing water and which she took everywhere. It was a well that allowed the People of Israel to drink water in the desert and survive its dryness. Miriam herself was a flowing well, especially in the hard times when despair spread, when things seemed doomed and there was no solution on the horizon. It was then that her vitality burst forth most prominently.

This is why a relatively new custom has emerged among certain communities of placing a cup for Miriam next to the traditional cup reserved for Elijah the Prophet during the Seder meal. The cup for Miriam, however, is filled not with wine but water, and is made of glass. It is a cup reminding us of the hope and belief in miracles that happen every day.

The custom of leaving a cup of wine for Elijah the Prophet is based on a halachic dispute over whether Jews are required to drink four cups of wine at the Seder – or five, one for each redemption of the Jewish People. Everyone agrees on the four cups, but the fifth is up for debate. Therefore, the custom emerged to place a fifth cup, but not to drink from it.

While Jewish religious jurists simply call this cup “the fifth cup”, it has become popularly known as the cup of Elijah. According to the Maharal of Prague, this name was given because Elijah is the symbol of redemption, and thus the cup of redemption is named for him. But according to the Gaon of Vilna, it is because Elijah will come at the End of Days and resolve all halachic disputes – including the question of the fifth cup.

The cup of Elijah attained a special status at the Seder table. Which is why we place Miriam’s cup next to it.

The cup of Miriam the Prophetess seeks to correct a historic and narrative injustice by securing a place of honor at the Seder table and in the story of redemption, for the women who also led the people:

“This is the cup of Miriam, the cup of living water, in memory of the Exodus. May it be God’s will that we merit drinking from the waters of Miriam’s well for health and redemption. May it be God’s will that we learn from Miriam and all the women to come out with timbrels and dancing in the face of the miracles of daily life and sing to God in every moment – Amen!”

The blessing written on Miriam the Prophetess’ cup seeks to give thanks for the ability to believe in the good even during difficult times, and gratitude for the strength to not surrender to despair or pain but rather to find the moments and points of light, and to sing, play, and rejoice in daily life.

From a distance everything looks like a miracle

but up close even a miracle doesn’t look like that.

Even someone who crossed the Red Sea when it split

saw only the sweating back

of the man in front of him

and the swaying of his big thighs

Yehudah Amichai, translation by Robert Alter