Declaring Independence With 150 Lira in Your Pocket

In May of 1948, designer Otte Wallish was given his “mission impossible”: Get everything ready for a Declaration of Independence ceremony. You have 24 hours. Also: Were there nude images hiding behind Theodor Herzl’s portrait?

Chen Malul | 13.05.24

Declaration of Independence ceremony on May 14, 1948. Photo: Rudi Weissenstein

At 11:00 AM on the morning of May 13, 1948, one day before Israel declared statehood, Otte Wallish was given a very sensitive assignment. The official graphic artist of the Hebrew Yishuv (the Jewish community in pre-State Israel) was summoned to an urgent meeting at the Tel Aviv Museum – at the time, the only museum in the first Hebrew city. He had been summoned by Ze’ev Sherf, who had only recently been appointed “Temporary Secretary of the People’s Administration”. During the hasty meeting, which lasted no more than a few minutes, Sherf assigned Otte Wallish his task: “Get the large hall of the museum ready within 24 hours. That’s where the ceremony for the Declaration of Independence will take place.” Before Wallish could even ask for details, Sherf disappeared from the room to in a rush to attend to the other pressing items on his agenda that day.

Otte Wallish at work. Source: Wallish family

Wallish was given a budget of 150 lira.

Ben-Gurion’s plan was for the ceremony to be held under a heavy veil of secrecy.

Wallish approached this urgent task with every ounce of energy he had left after having spent several sleepless nights designing the first series of stamps to be used by the state-in-the-making. As the battles of the War of Independence were underway in neighboring Jaffa, Wallish ran around the streets of Tel Aviv to purchase a wooden desk, cloth to cover up the walls that were covered in nude images behind the stage upon which the nation’s leaders would be sitting in a few short hours, and a carpet to lend the hall a more dignified ambiance. The chairs to be placed on the stage were confiscated from local cafes. The meager budget wasn’t enough to cover flags, and it wasn’t possible to get a picture of the Zionist visionary Theodor Herzl from any of the stores. He therefore borrowed both of these items from the Keren Hayesod (the United Israel Appeal). However, the flags needed to be washed, so Wallish took them to a nearby laundromat and ordered “lightning-fast washing.”

Some of the expenses that were paid for the Declaration of Statehood ceremony, from the Ari Wallish Collection

The nude statue at the entrance to the museum was covered in white cloth, and even though the War of Independence was still in its initial stages, Wallish decided to cover all the window curtains in the hall with black, as a precaution to avoid damage from possible aerial bombardments launched against Tel Aviv. It was a case of “who knows what will happen?” And as if all that wasn’t enough, Wallish was called back to Sherf’s office to receive another assignment: to prepare – without delay – a parchment upon which the Declaration of Independence itself would be written.

Wallish hurried off to the Beit HaMehandes (“engineer’s house”) at the end of Dizengoff Street. He asked to see examples of various parchments, but since he wasn’t permitted to reveal why he needed this strange request fulfilled, the clerk helping him got the feeling that this fellow was just a bit “off.” Wallish bought the parchment and brought it back to his office to test it for durability, to make sure it would last for generations to come.

The end of the Declaration of Independence, designed and prepared by Otte Walish

As soon as his dizzying spree of purchasing/borrowing/confiscating was complete, this graphic artist turned interior designer was free to prepare the hall for the historic occasion. And so, at 11:00 AM the following day, exactly 24 hours after he was assigned his task and only five hours before the declaration was signed and the State of Israel came into being, the hall was finally ready for the attendees. This was all described in a pictorial article by Pinchas Yourman in the Davar newspaper five years later, in 1953. The Hebrew article can be found online in the National Library’s Historical Press Collection.

The official invitation given to Otte Wallish to attend the Declaration of Independence ceremony. Ari Wallish Collection.

That same Pinchas Yourman described the declaration itself in his book The First 32 Minutes, as follows:

“It is unbelievable – but it is a fact; the most important and decisive ceremony ever held in Israel – the historic ceremony for the Declaration of Statehood in the Tel Aviv Museum – lasted only 32 minutes; it included one short speech; was conducted with exemplary order, and was praised afterward by its participants with the best of compliments, ranging from “great and impressive” to “once in a lifetime, moving and felt in the depths of the soul.”

Despite the cloud of secrecy cast over the location of the ceremony, the large gathering inside the Tel Aviv Museum – which had previously served as the private home of the late mayor Meir Dizengoff – guaranteed that a large crowd would show up outside the entrance hall in the hope of catching a glimpse of the most important ceremony in the country’s history. One particularly amusing story told by historian Mordechai Naor in his book The Friday that Changed Destiny concerned a guest who almost didn’t get in. The guest was Pinchas Rosen, then chairman of the small and now forgotten “New Aliyah” political party. Since Rosen had forgotten his official invitation to the ceremony at home, the guard stationed at the entrance to the museum refused to allow him to enter. None of his begging and pleading helped. He remained stuck outside until Ze’ev Sherf intervened, and Rosen, who would soon become Justice Minister of the State of Israel, was finally allowed to enter the ceremony and sign the declaration. The truth is that there was no shortage of offended parties and people with all manner of grievances trying to use all their contacts to gain entry to the prestigious event.

Ultimately, only 350 people were allowed through the doors of the museum at 16 Rothschild Blvd. The newspaper reporters didn’t even reveal where it was being held. The entire event was broadcast on the Kol Israel (“Voice of Israel”) radio station, as its inaugural broadcast.

“*A Broadcast From the Meeting of the Jewish National Council”* – This laconic announcement informing the public of a radio broadcast on *Kol Yisrael* at 4 pm was published in every morning paper on May 14, 1948. This particular item is taken from *HaTzofe*.

Pinchas Yourman offered the following description:

“After a light banging of the (walnut-colored) gavel on the desk, everyone stood up and sang HaTikvah. In a voice that was later described in the newspapers as “trembling,” David Ben-Gurion began by uttering 15 words that have been stamped by the seal of history: “I will read for you the founding Declaration of the State of Israel, which has been approved in the first reading by the Jewish National Council.”

Upon hearing the name of the State of Israel being called out explicitly, the crowd burst into thunderous applause. One of the men sitting on the stage, Rabbi Y. L. Fishman, didn’t take part in the spontaneous applause. He burst into tears.

The haste with which the Declaration of Statehood ceremony was organized, and the amount of improvisation required in order for it to take place within such a short time didn’t manage to detract anything from the importance of the event. Ultimately, the ceremony was every bit as moving as it was brief, and it also symbolized a new beginning in many ways, for example, with new institutions (the radio station, for one) being established which would continue to accompany the new state for many years to follow.

Long live the State of Israel!

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.

Miryam Zakheim | 30.04.24

History of Israel The Holocaust

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?

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.

Chen Malul | 30.04.24

Haggadah Passover The Holocaust סודות כתבי היד העבריים

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.

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.

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.

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?

Ayala Deckel | 16.04.24

Jewish Feminism Jewish folklore Passover Women

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.

A photo of the Yahudah Haggadah, 1470-1480. Germany, Franconia. The Center for Jewish Art at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem]

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!”

Photo of the Hispano Moresque Haggadah. The Center for Jewish Art, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem]

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