Mindflex- Great Women Who Transformed Jewish History- Mindy Ginsberg

over the past few weeks we have been learning the most amazing and probably the most famous story of all of jewish history and of course i'm talking about the story of the jews coming out of egypt and we all know the basic story we're going to tell it in a few weeks and our seder right at our passover seder and we were slaves in egypt and then moses came and there were the ten plagues and then we got taken out of egypt led by moses but we hit the sea and then the sea split and the jews passed through the sea and after they passed through the egyptians followed and the water closed up around the egyptians and they all drowned and with the jews safe on the other side it says yeshia moshe the jews led by moses sang his song a song of gratitude to god but then if you look in the torah the strangest thing happens and i'm going to read it to you it says and miriam the prophetess took miriam hanavia miriam the prophetess why does it call him miriam the prophetess yes she was a prophetess but abraham avraham was also a prophet and they don't call him avraham hanavi and isaac was a prophet and the torah doesn't call him yitzhak yitzhak the prophet so why does the torah address her as miriam the prophetess let's continue which miriam achos the sister of go ahead finish the sentence the sister of 99 of the people would say moses right that's not what it says it says the sister ahos aharon the sister of aharon when you're talking about somebody and you want to say who this person was wouldn't it make more sense to say that she was the sister of the more famous brother moses who just took everybody out of egypt why does it describe her as a host aharon and what did she take es hatof biada she took the tambourine the tambourine should i take a tambourine the tambourine which tambourine did i miss something do i need to turn back a few pages and see which tambourine did they talk about a tambourine i don't think so but and all the women followed her and they were all singing and dancing with their tambourines they all happen to have tambourines was that like the number one thing on their list to pack when they were leaving egypt how did they all have tambourines so in order to answer this question and actually a few more why didn't mary need to sing her own song anyway was she a feminist she said oh the women need to sing their own song different than the men i don't think so and if the torah records for us these specific words and tells us that she sang our own song that means that there's something that we're supposed to learn from this that ultimately is going to enhance our lives so to answer the questions we need to go back in time and we need to learn a little bit about miriam in her life in judaism a person's name is a little bit of prophecy it actually tells a little bit about their lives she was named miriam what does miriam mean miriam comes from the shores from the root word mar which means bitter think about those bitter herbs maror that we eat the murrah on the pesach theater so she was born into a bitter and a dark time and that's why she was named miriam and if i'm successful today i'm going to bring you back in time to not only hear about her life during that dark time but maybe to experience it a little bit through her eyes so we tend to think all's well that ends well the jews were slaves in egypt but then we got out and then we were saved and everything is okay how many of us take the time to stop and think what life was like for the jews in egypt at that time have you been to yad vashem have you heard the testimonies of the people who survived the holocaust and what kind of torture they went through how barbaric the germans were the reality is that the jews who lived in egypt as slaves were also tortured by these egyptians the egyptians themselves were barbaric people sometimes people say why didn't the jews in germany get out if things were getting bad why didn't they see the writing on the wall and the answer is because it happened so slowly it evolved over time it devolved over time first it got a little bit bad and people said okay this is bad but it's not so bad it's no reason to leave i have my business i have my family i'll bring my family i don't know where i would go and then it got a little bit worse okay nobody anticipated that it was going to get worse but it did and then little by little until it was too late for them to do anything and they couldn't get out any longer we're gonna learn a similar thing happen let's go back in time let's go back to egypt and say how how did it become how did it happen that they became slaves so we know that abraham had his son isaac yitzhak and we know that it's had 12 sons and yosef his son was in egypt as the viceroy he was the one who saved everyone during the famine and jakov and his 11 sons went down to egypt to get food during this famine and when they lived in egypt they were specifically given the city of goshen a place a secluded place where the jews could be where they wouldn't be influenced by the people around them by the egyptians and things were relatively okay for the jews at the beginning certainly for the first 17 years when yaakov was alive things were okay for the next 58 years yosef was still alive and he was the viceroy so people were nice to the jews and even until the last brother died levy which was 22 years after yosef died things were pretty okay and during this time the jews were very successful the jews prospered as a matter of fact they were multiplying so much there was such a population explosion that they couldn't fit in goshen anymore and they had to actually start moving into the outskirts of the ocean into the cities surrounding ocean they were also very successful and because there's nothing new under the sun and history tends to repeat itself whenever the jews are successful anti-semitism raises its ugly head as usual and that's what happened oh the jews they're so refined they think that they're better than us don't they and do you see how many children they're having twins and triplets they're going to overrun this country they're going to take over we have to do something about this so the egyptians mobilized and they decided to approach the king it says in the torah that a new king arose was it really a new king actually when these people approached the king and they said to him you know these jews there's a jewish problem here we've got to do something about this problem the king started initially to defend the jews what do you mean they're so good yosef is the one who saved us don't you remember him and basically they said to him para you have a choice either you do something about this jewish problem that we have or we're going to find a king who will and so he had to start changing his tune vayaka mel khadash a new king with a new attitude came into power and he called his advisors and he said what are we going to do about this jewish problem and they actually devised a meticulous plan how they were going to eliminate the jews but they didn't start out saying we're going to eliminate the jews they started out saying we're going to create a workforce they came up with these things called the labor laws what the labor laws did is originally it raised the taxes and it raised the taxes and it kept raising the taxes until people couldn't afford nobody could afford those taxes so then the government had a great plan that's okay if you can't afford the taxes what we're going to do is we're going to come up with these um workforce type of programs you can sign up and you will work and you'll get paid you'll get handsomely paid not only that it's going to be a lot of construction work so you can actually build yourself a house as part of your job and you can keep the house because we hear you're having a population explosion you need a bigger house and this made sense so the jews and mass decided to sign up for this fantastic program i work i get paid well i can pay my taxes i get a new house it's a good deal all around even the egyptians signed up because it was a good deal for everybody and so they started to work and it's even told to us that pyro himself the king came down and he worked alongside them one day and what do you do if the king is working alongside you right you want to work really really hard you want to show that you can do a really good job you want to impress the king so what happened was is that even though usually i produced 78 bricks on a regular day today because of the king i'm working so hard i just want to show him i'm going to produce 100 bricks and you know what the next day 100 bix became the quota oh i see you can produce 100 bricks so that's now what you need to do if you want to stay a part of the program and of course i do want to stay a part of this program this is a great program only over time the jews started to look around anybody notice that it's only jews here we're all the egyptians didn't they sign up they were working alongside us in the beginning and they noticed that all the egyptians were promoted to be the headmasters the task masters and the jews were the ones doing the menial labor and then eventually they said you know what if you don't meet your quota of bricks you're not going to get any of the benefits anymore so they lost their benefits and then over time they said you know what if you don't meet your quota of bricks every day we're going to beat you legally that's going to be allowed okay so they're thinking to themselves well there are a hundred of us to one egyptian taskmaster i mean chances are that the egyptian is probably not going to notice how many bricks each one of us are going to make so it's not so bad except do you know how in germany they set it up that there were capos so that one jew was in charge of a whole bunch of other jews well they set up the same system here so basically if you had 10 jews that were monitored by one jewish capo so to speak you only needed one egyptian for a hundred jews and if any one of the jews didn't meet their quota the capo in charge of them was punished sound familiar so this work program that started out as it's a great idea you work work is going to get you money work is going to make successful work will save the day and you'll get paid and you'll be able to pay your taxes in the end this workforce actually turned into slavery i'm a little bit reminded of that slogan that they had over auschwitz right work will set you free that same kind of a concept and new edicts kept coming little by little the jews started to be viewed as subhuman for example these labor laws where they were working turned into labor camps where they weren't allowed to go home they could only go home once every two weeks and over time they started to get assigned menial tasks it was legal to assign a jew walking anywhere a menial task do you have those pictures in your head of those germans who would ask the jews to bend down and shine their boots on the street that was considered legal well the egyptians did something similar technically legally you could stop any jew on the street and you could tell him to clean up the dung from your sheep jews were considered subhuman you could do anything you wanted and that devolved further into a sport let's have fun let's send the jews to capture some wild animals what's the worst that can happen we'll have fun watching them get torn apart by a wild animal or maybe we'll have a new wild animal as a pet and then over time the jews were hoarded back into goshen into a ghetto where it was just not possible for them to fit and the conditions were terrible in which they lived but the plan was not working the idea was to work them and work them and work them until eventually they were going to maybe die out or they couldn't multiply or they wouldn't be successful but the reality is that they were still multiplying they were still having twins and triplets so we needed another plan so pyro called his advisors together again and they said well actually we look in the stars what we're seeing is that a jewish boy is going to ascend the throne and be their savior so we need to do something about getting rid of those jewish boys i know we'll kill the babies but we can't say that people will think we're a barbaric nation and we don't want people to think that we are a barbaric nation does that sound a little bit familiar did you read the stories about how they'd have people playing violins at the uh or at the beginning of the entranceways of the different concentration camps so when the red course came they would say oh they're playing violins how bad could it be oh no it's just a work camp and the showers yeah showers we let them shower every day but we all know what was going on in those showers so this was a plan to get rid of the jews to get rid of the boys specifically so they wouldn't multiply to get rid of the boys because this way no boy would rise into power we've got gotten used to these slaves we like having these jews to push around the sport of having them get those wild animals is a little bit fun so if we get rid of the boys right then we don't have to worry about the multiplying we don't have to worry that anybody's gonna rise up into power and take away our slaves and not to mention if we get rid of the boys then we have all the girls for ourselves that we can plunder but since we can't say it out loud and we don't want to be appear to appear to be barbaric what can we do i know what they did is they called in the midwives the jewish midwives and her daughter miriam little miriam who's still a child and they said we've just passed a new law and the law is that any time a little boy is born to the jews you're going to have to suffocate and some say maybe break the neck of the boy and then just tell the mother that it was a stillborn this way no one will be any the wiser we'll get rid of the boy population and they'll stop multiplying and will be solved the whole jewish problem the whole it'll be gone and what do you think yo miriam did well of course they walked out of there and they weren't going to do it so they didn't and time passed and para calls the ochev back to his chambers and says excuse me um did you not understand what i said i mean i'm looking at the paper every day and i'm not seeing that the rate of stillborns is going up so you're not doing what i said to which you haven't replied no you don't understand of course we would want to do what you want but we can't because these jews they're having babies so quickly twins triplets quadruplets by the time we get there the baby's already born so we can't say that they're stillborn because they hear their babies crying so there's really nothing we can do plan c since plan b didn't work so now power calls his advisors together and says now what are we going to do and they say well we're going to look in the stars you know what we see we see that this boy that's supposed to like save the jews and lead them out of slavery we see that he's going to meet his doom by water the reason they saw that is because we all know that moses moshe in the end was punished because he hit the rock when the jews wanted water so it was related to water so i know we're going to drown all of the new baby boys this one we don't have to worry whoever is going to be born will drown all the boys and this baby will drown also and no boy will save the jews but we can't say that we can't let the people think that we're barbaric that we are going to be drowning babies that's awful i know we're gonna leave the babies on the shore and when the tide comes in well you know oh well the babies were swept out into the sea and slowly over time because propaganda is such an incredibly dangerous dangerous weapon that people can use over time what happened was is that people started to think of the jews in such a sub-human way that they started to make it into a sport who could take the baby that's on the shore and throw them further into the water kids were actually excused from school to go on baby hunts to find the babies that they were hiding so that they can throw them into the water it also you got rewarded it seems if you ever saw a jewish woman walking in the street and you recorded that and you figured out okay she's pregnant now let's see what her due date is going to be they kept those records so they would know who was due to have a baby then they know when to go and try and find that baby even if the mother was trying to hide that baby well i know you were pregnant so i know you had a baby and they would find the babies do you remember those stories from the holocaust those awful stories about the mothers who are hiding in the attics or in the cellars or behind the the china closet with the babies and when the germans would come in they would try to stifle the baby so that the babies wouldn't cry and give away their hiding place and there were so many stories of mothers who in an effort to muffle their babies ended up suffocating their babies well the egyptians used to come hunting for babies with their own babies and when they made their babies cry usually when a baby hears another baby cry the baby that was in hiding would also cry and that's how they found many of the babies this was the time that miriam lived in she was born into this time what do you think it was like for a child to live in a time like this it was in this climate that amram miriam's father yochevid's wife made a decision he was the leader of the jewish people at the time and he gathered together all the men and he said listen they're killing out all of our boys that are born what sense does it make for us to keep having babies so i am going to divorce my wife so that i don't keep having babies that are going to be killed and everybody followed suit the way they described the scene is that people who are passing by the city of goshen they heard this wailing this like siren they didn't know what it was and as they got closer and closer to the city of goshen they realized that it was the sound of all the women crying begging screaming for their husbands not to divorce them when miriam hears this she approaches her father and miriam knew what her father needed to hear because she had wisdom beyond her years how long does it take adults to realize sometimes that when we need to convince somebody to do the right thing we need to not say what we want to say even if it's correct we need to say what they need to hear in order to do the right thing and this is what miriam said to her father daddy paro decreed on the boys so there won't be any boys but because of you there also won't be any jewish girls not only that daddy but it's possible that even with pyro's edict some people will be able to successfully hide their baby boys because of you they'll be zero boys none to be saved and daddy maybe most importantly i had a prophecy i had a vision that mommy is going to have a baby boy and he is going to be the savior of the jews so please daddy don't give up on the jewish people and she spoke to his heart and he realized that she was right and so he decided he was going to remarry his wife johaved and miram said no daddy not a private ceremony you need to do this it's a big wedding in the public square square for everybody to see so that everyone will take back their wives and sure enough they had a big beautiful wedding in the public square and the medris describes to us that little miriam was dancing in front of her father the groom and her mother the bride together with her little brother aharon unfortunately over there in the corner was an egyptian hiding behind the building and marking down jewish wedding on this date let's calculate nine months from now because there might be a baby and will be able to come and get that baby and six months pass and miriam give and joche gives birth prematurely to a little boy named moshe moses and things are actually wonderful because when he is born a bright light appears in the house the house is lit up because of him and they realize that miriam was right and it says in the madrish that amram her father came and kissed little miriam on the head and said your prophecy came true thank you for not letting us give up on the jewish people and they raised this child for three months until it was nine months after the wedding and now the egyptians came because it was recorded and they knocked on the door and that's okay because they hid the baby initially but then they came back and they came back and at some point they realized that they could not hide this baby anymore and they had no choice they had to take this baby your habit the mother made a basket and they placed the baby in the basket and they set the baby adrift in the water amongst the reeds and at this point amram miriam's father slaps her on the head and says to her what happened to your prophecy what is miriam thinking at this point well miriam actually goes down to the water and she stands there by the water watching the baby what could she be thinking she could certainly be thinking oh no i mean how could this possibly turn out good i mean this baby is either going to drown or this baby's going to starve out there by the reeds but that's not what miriam was thinking miriam stood by the water and if you read the words of the torah that explain to us so much there are two ways that you can say somebody stood you can say la amoud that also means to stand but there's actually another way and the word that is used here to say that miriam stood by the water is vate that she stood but she stood strong you know sometimes you can just stand and sometimes you can stand strong she strong she stood strong with faith she knew it wasn't a question whether or not god was going to save this baby she knew that god would she had faith complete faith even when it seemed like there was absolutely no way out for her it was just to stand by and to watch how god i don't know how i don't need to know i don't need to know how i'm going to stand strong and i'm going to wait and see i'm going to leave this in god's hands because god can do anything even when there's no hope have you ever been in a situation where it seemed like there was no hope where there was no option it's those difficult times that how we react really tells so much about what kind of people we are we don't get to control our circumstances but we always can control our reaction to difficult circumstances just the other day i found myself in a very difficult situation i was on my way to visit my children and we had packed up and it was evening and my husband was already waiting outside in the car for me and i realized that i had not left money on the counter for the woman who helps me clean the house who was coming the next day so i ran upstairs to my [Music] sock drawer where i keep a sock with thousands of dollars of cash and every single week i would go to that drawer and take out some money and that's how i play this late pay this lady that cleans my house and i go upstairs and i open up my drawer and it's empty and for a moment i just stand there shocked and i say oh right it's empty because today is wednesday night and on sunday we got some new furniture in my bedroom and we decided to rearrange things and i actually went through all of my old drawers and things that i no longer needed i hadn't worn in 20 years i decided i had this big garbage bag and i was throwing things out and i remembered when i came across some socks that didn't have any matches i said well what do i need that for and i actually threw them in the garbage which means that i threw out the sock that contained thousands of dollars in the garbage and i specifically remember that i went downstairs on sunday night with this big bag of garbage and my husband said oh you know what that's a big bag of garbage no reason to leave it in the house the garbage people come on monday morning to collect the garbage i'm bringing this out right now i'm gonna put it out by the curb so they can take it away and this is wednesday night and i sat there on the floor thinking i can't believe this thousands of dollars i should really be upset and for some reason most probably because the night before i had just gone to another project inspire program which was about happiness where they specifically talked about the fact that we can't control the circumstances but we can always control our reaction we can choose to be happy even in difficult situations can't change what happened anyway and i felt this calmness and i just said okay you know what i'm really upset i should be upset but i can't control this the fact the money is gone but i can't control my attitude and i'm not gonna let get i'm not gonna get angry i'm not to get upset i'm just going to accept that for some reason this is what god wanted to happen so be it it was never my money to begin with it was a gift from god when i got it originally right so everything we have is a gift from god and god decided that i shouldn't have this money now but i did need to go downstairs and tell my husband and i remember issuing a little thanks to god for having the most incredible husband that i knew wouldn't get angry at me and i went downstairs and i got into the car next to him and i said before we go i just want to say something something i've got such great news you know on sunday when i was cleaning out my drawers and i was throwing things out that we didn't need and it seems that i threw out the sack with the money i don't know what i was thinking i just wasn't thinking and it went into the garbage as a single sock and i just want to confirm you said you were taking out the garbage and putting it by the curb on sunday night you did didn't you and my husband said yes i definitely did i put it out by the curb and we sat there in the car for a few minutes just understanding okay so the money's gone and we were sad that's okay a little bit sad inside but we decided we're not gonna get let's let us let this get us down and all of a sudden i turned we were sitting outside and i looked and i saw a lot of bags of garbage well that made sense actually because tomorrow's thursday morning and my husband would have again put out the garbage in front and i said oh so those bags are from you know the new garbage and he said yeah and then all of a sudden his face lit up and he said monday afternoon i remember being so upset they didn't collect our garbage they skipped our house they did collect garbage but for some reason on monday night monday morning they did not collect our garbage sure enough we jumped out of the car we went to the garbage bag by the garbage we opened it up and there was the sock with the money because god can do anything for miriam the question was not would this baby be saved it was i'm gonna watch and see how god will save because faith means that even when there is no way out there are only two doors the answer is there's always a third door there's always the possibility of a third door because god can do anything but really how could he possibly save this baby who was the worst person that could possibly come down now to the river to bathe okay you're gonna say paro who's the second worst person as rabbi david foreman asks from whom i learned a lot of this material para's daughter well that's who comes down of course and she sees the baby and she reaches out and she gets the baby and she decides that she's going to raise this baby and miriam is standing there standing strong and watching this unfold and it says that in the measures that she took this baby to an egyptian nurse made but the baby moshe would not nurse from an egyptian nurse maid and this point the chutzpah the gall the nerve the faith the audacity of miriam she walks as a young child right up to this daughter of para and she says i see you having a problem the baby's not going to nurse from a non-jewish because she realized that paris water wasn't dumb she must realize this must be a jewish baby who else is leaving a baby in a basket by the water right maybe you need a jewish nursemaid because i happen to know one who might be available for you really could you get her so miriam runs home and she brings your heaven and you'll have it just imagine the scene you have it is standing there in front of the daughter of pyro and the daughter of power says to her here's the deal i have this baby and i'd like for you to nurse this baby for two years and i'm gonna pay you well for that but there's a caveat i can't give you the job unless you can promise one thing i need you to promise that you're gonna love this baby like your own and yo it says um love this baby like my own yes i'm pretty sure that i can do that yesterday or this morning you'll have it had given up this baby and given up hope that looked like there was no way out to save this baby and now she's taking this baby home and she's going to nurse this baby for two years and even after that for the next 20 years moshe grows up in the palace what do you think miriam is thinking now well things are looking good right there's a prophecy that there's going to be a boy born to yohev that's going to lead the jews out of egypt and save them and now he's growing up in the palace he's really in a good position to do this things look good for the prophecy right until he turns 20. and he decides to go out and see what's going on and he sees the suffering and it says that he even starts to help the jews who are working and then he notices one day that there is an egyptian that is beating a jewish person what's the story well it seems that dassan the jewish person in the morning was not home and the egyptian task master came to his house to get him to bring him to work but since the sun wasn't home only his wife was home the taskmaster took advantage of his wife and when dustin came in the task master was upset at him and started to beat him and moshe walks on the scene and he kills this egyptian and he saves the sun the next day moshe comes outside and he sees two jews arguing one of them is dasan and the other one is the brother-in-law he was the brother of dawson's wife and this is what moshe overhears he overhears dustin saying she's defiled i will have nothing to do with her and aviram her brother is saying no dustin don't you understand it wasn't her faulty the egyptian forced her and moshe says please your jewish people don't fight with each other don't you have enough enemies with the egyptians jews shouldn't fight amongst each other and dustin and aviran turn to moshe and said excuse me who are you to butt in do you think that we don't know who you are you high and mighty prince we know that you're really jewish and you know what i think we can get quite a bit of money if we tell paro that you are really jewish and that you killed an egyptian yesterday and sure enough moshe is born on trial and he has to hightail it out of egypt and he escapes he escapes and he's gone for 60 years sixty years go by think about it the holocaust lasted for over five years the egyptians are making the jewish people suffer they are slaves they are being tortured five years ten years pass where's moshe what's miriam thinking what's everyone else thinking they don't have whatsapp they can't keep in touch with him is he even still alive 15 years 20 years if amram muram's father hit her on the head on that day when they hit him in the in the basket what do you think amram is thinking now 25 years and things keep getting worse for the jews we're told so many things in the midrash we're told that paro had leprosy and his advisor said the only way to cure your leprosy is if you bathe in the blood of babies which babies are we gonna kill yup you got it the jewish baby so every day jewish babies were killed so that paro could bathe in their blood 30 years 35 years more edicts they started burning babies alive 40 years 45 years here's another edict when the jews didn't meet their quota what they would do is for bricks that they had to make they would take the babies and they would put the babies into the wall instead of a brick so whereas before you had no choice right you had them you quoted you got beaten the babies were being taken randomly whenever they were found now if i didn't work hard enough and i didn't make my quota then your baby was taken imagine the guilt that they felt and during this time what do you think people were thinking well what's miriam thinking you know what i'm going to tell you what everyone else was thinking and then we'll discuss what miriam was thinking the men during this time they had grown totally despondent they were tired there was no end in sight to the suffering i mean maybe when moshe when he was growing up in the palace we had an ace in the hole there was something to hope for that was something to hold on to but now he's gone it's been 60 years there is no hope and so they separated from their wives they didn't divorce them but they separated from their wives why would i want to bring a baby into this kind of a world if it were up to the men the jews would have ceased to exist do you know who didn't give up during this time it's the woman who didn't give up it was the woman who did not let their husbands give up they didn't let their children give up they didn't give up on the family and they didn't give up on having a family so what did they do they took these pieces of copper and they would rub them and rub them until they would shine like a mirror and they went out fishing and they caught some fish and they packed a beautiful picnic basket and they went out into the fields with these copper mirrors and their picnic basket and they met the husbands who were working in the field during their breaks and they would have a nice picnic lunch with them and they would hold up the copper mirrors and they would say look how beautiful i am even says they took from the reeds and they made makeup for themselves to make themselves look beautiful aren't i so beautiful oh look at you who's more beautiful me or you and they flirted with their husbands and they inspired their husbands where did they get the strength who inspired them to do this i mean the woman they were certainly suffering as well it was miriam during those 60 years that moshe was gone miriam became the leader of the jewish people she would meet with the woman she would listen to them she would cry with them and she would inspire them and she taught them how to inspire their husbands not by lecturing and saying this is the wrong thing how can you do this no take the mirrors go out to the fields breathe life into your husbands breathe faith breathe hope into them who took us out of egypt who let us out of course we know it's moshe it's moses who made sure that there were still jews to take out who actually saved the jewish people in egypt miriam steadfast in her belief in hashem in god and in good she led the woman she taught them and she inspired them to never give up and then they inspired their families on the day that moses was leading the jews out of egypt and they came up to that wall of water to that what are we going to do now we're stuck so we're told that the people divided into four different groups a quarter of the people said let's just commit suicide i mean there is no hope there's no choice and a quarter of the people said we're gonna turn around and we're gonna fight as if they could fight against the egyptian army right they were slaves a quarter of the people said let's just turn around and go back and we'll just go back and be slaves and a quarter of the people said let's just pray and moses calls out to these people and he says stop and he invoked miriam's strength there was once a young girl who stood by the water in an impossible situation there was a baby that could not possibly be saved and yet she stood strong and had faith and believed and didn't give up what are moshe's words what were his words to the jewish people this time how did he invoke miram's miriam miriam's memory what did he say he said like miriam it said vate satsav that miriam stood strong so he turns to the jewish people and he says his yatsubu uru as yeshua hashem stand strong and you will see the salvation of hashem because we are reliving the impossible scenario by the water reliving that same thing it's not possible to be saved as we stand by the water and yet stand strong with your faith and watch just like miriam did don't give up even though there's no logical way that you can think of that we can possibly be saved you need to always entertain the possibility that there's a fifth door or a sixth door because god can do anything and at that moment the prophecy of miriam came true as a result of them having the faith that she had on that day i don't know how many of you have seen the ten commandments and if you think that moshe moses took his staff and then the water split that's not actually what happened instead when moses told the people stand strong and watch moshe told the people go god said to moses don't call out to me matataki light now's not the time to just call out you need to have faith and you need to go take the first step and that's what nachshon ben amin did he took that for even though the water had not yet split he started walking into the water and as he walked into the water it split and as he took the next step it split more and each person had to have that faith and that's what we have to do sometimes in life even when it doesn't seem possible even when walking into the water we think we're gonna drown god can do anything have faith and so the jews were saved and they got to the other side and the egyptians went in and the water closed around them and they drowned and now miriam sings why does she need to sing her own song she sings because they were saved through what she taught them by example and now we understand the entire verse right miriam the prophetess the sister of aharon took the tambourine what is all of that well go back and think about it we're specifically these words are specifically reminding us for all time about that little girl miriam who had a prophecy miriam hanaviah miriam the prophetess at a time when she was ahos aharon she was not yet moshe's sister because moshe wasn't born yet right we're specifically remembering that story that prophecy at the time when she was the sister of only aharon and what tambourine did she take well during these difficult times during all of these 60 years when everything seemed lost she was inspiring the woman she imbued the woman with hope for the sake of the family she taught the woman that they could make tambourines and they should because the day is coming soon when they're going to need them to sing and to dance when god is going to save us so she had a tambourine specifically saved for that day that she knew was going to come and she was going to sing and dance for god and all the women had their specific tambourines because they had faith because of miriam that there was one day going to be a day when they were going to need those tambourines so whereas the song that was sung by all the jewish people was a song of gratitude to god to hashem miriam song celebrated the hope and the faith in god that she had as she stood by the water that moshe invoked as they stood by the water as they stood strong and they went forward with faith this was a song of faith and hope how good of a leader and a role model was miriam well just a few months later we know that the moses went up to get the torah and after 40 days they calculated incorrectly and he didn't come down exactly when they thought and the men lost hope again and they they decided to have this golden calf which the woman did not participate in because they didn't lose faith and sometime after that when the men sent spies into israel you know who didn't believe the bad words about israel when they came back you know who had faith in god there was the woman the men all died in the desert they didn't make it into israel because of that the women are the ones who went into israel it was in miriam's merit that they had this faith and they survived 40 years in the desert in the desert there's usually no water but there was the well the air of miriam the well of miriam that traveled with them through the desert to remind them of that little girl who stood by the water and never lost hope and she had faith and because of that they were saved how did she do it how did she not lose faith i mean it was 60 years i mean we're in a difficult situation that persists we pray and we cry and we wait and we wait and sometimes we begin to lose hope i just heard the story of a modern day miriam she was a woman who was sick herself and she heard about a boy who had gotten a diagnosis that he had a 20 chance of living two years and he decided well what's the point and he just dropped out of life he stayed home he wasn't going to school anymore so this woman went to see him and she went to speak to him and she said why aren't you going to school and he said i'm sorry did you not hear i've got a 20 chance of living more than two years and she said nonsense you like every other person in the world have a 50 chance of living tomorrow and a 50 chance of dying tomorrow because god decides every day who's going to live and who's going to die and i really learned that lesson it was about 36 years ago and i was in seattle and my father-in-law had just had a bone marrow transplant and he was not doing well and he was in a coma and he was dying and it was a friday night and we sat in the waiting room in the hospital with the social worker her name was debbie she was a 29 year old lovely lovely girl and she said to us don't lose hope i know it seems like you know there's really no hope it seems like he's gonna die very soon but the reality is that none of us know it's in god's hands anybody could die any day and we went home that night and when we came to the hospital the next morning we heard that debbie was hit by a bus and killed that night we learned that lesson the reality is that none of us know the next day when this modern day miriam got a phone call from the mother the mother told her i don't understand what did you say to my son he decided he's going to live he's going to school again he's going to get on with his life i need to know what you said was she able to change his reality was she able to improve his odds no you know what she said to him she said to him you can wait to die or you can live while you are living she inspired him not to lose hope even in a desperate situation there's a quote the tragedy of life is not death but what we let die inside of us while we live the truth of the matter is that none of us know how or how long we're going to live but one thing that miriam teaches us is to stand strong with faith to be strong for others as well and to never give up even when the path that we're on seems difficult and unending may we always have the strength to stand strong with our song of gratitude to god for all the good that he does give us each and every day to take whatever bitter reality we may have and like miriam to change the ma from her name that root word of mar being bitter well there's also a world called may rim which is to lift up maybe be able to take that bitter reality that sometimes we have and like miriam changed the mar the bitter into a mission of may rim of lifting other people up like the water in the world rises as we eagerly await the ultimate salvation in our day really soon i have my tambourine ready to you