Following in Miriam’s Footsteps

Hatikvah is an unusual national anthem. Its author, Naftali Hertz Imber, had many detractors, and was a plagiarist, drinker, gossip, and freeloader; the tune for Hatikvah was taken from a Romanian folk song about an ox-drawn wagon.

Theodore Herzl despised Imber, and disliked the Hatikvah. This anthem was too simple and unsophisticated for Herzl’s tastes; and as a consequence, he was constantly searching for an alternative. Ironically, it was Herzl who cemented Hatikvah’s status as the unofficial anthem of the Zionist movement.

The Sixth Zionist Congress in 1903 is known as the “Congress of Tears.” Herzl shocked the delegates by presenting a plan to create a Jewish Homeland in the British colony of Uganda. It was just four months after the Kishinev Massacre, and Herzl was desperate to find a way to protect the Jews in Czarist Russia; he was even willing to compromise on the return to Zion. But the plan ran into furious opposition; and the Russian delegates in particular were insistent that the Jews return to their historic homeland. One delegate, Heinrich Rosenbaum, gave an impassioned speech and said:

We shall persevere in our efforts. We shall continue to fight. Our ancestors gave their lives while crying out ‘Shema Yisrael.’ We, their descendants, will not cease to fight for our beloved land….We shall continue the struggle with suffering and patience, and as long as there is breath within us, we shall proclaim: ‘Our hope is not yet lost!'”

The words “our hope is not yet lost” is the Hatikvah’s title phrase. Hatikvah’s lyrics speak of how the Jewish soul continued to yearn for Zion throughout 2,000 years of exile; and this dogged determination to return to the Land of Israel stood in stark contrast to Herzl’s Uganda Plan. At the conclusion of the Congress, after ten days of infighting, a large group of delegates spontaneously sang the Hatikvah. Right then and there, the Hatikvah became the unofficial Jewish national anthem.

One has to have sympathy for Herzl’s position. He recognized, well before anyone else, that the  Kishinev Massacre was merely the beginning, and that the lives of European Jewry were in danger. Being practical meant looking for a safe haven anywhere possible; and being practical made sense right then. Even so, Herzl was rejected by many of his former allies because he had lost hope in returning to Zion.

Many philosophers see hope as irrational and even dangerous. In early Greek thought hope had a negative reputation, a foolish attitude that confuses the gullible. Spinoza connects hope to naivete and superstition. Nietzsche saw hope as “the greatest of evils,” because it blinds man to the reality of life, and motivates them to “keep on making themselves miserable.”

Jews take a very different view of hope. After miraculously splitting the Red Sea, Moses leads the Jews in a song of joy and triumph, which begins with the words “I will sing to the Lord, For He has triumphed gloriously. The horse and its rider He has thrown into the sea!” At the end of the song, the Torah adds:

Then Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took the timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with flutes. And Miriam responded to them:

“Sing to the Lord,

For He has triumphed gloriously.

The horse and its rider

He has thrown into the sea!”

Commentators struggle to explain what exactly the women sang. The Midrash says Miriam led the women in a parallel recital of Moses’ song. The Biur and Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch say that Miriam and the women were the chorus, repeating the first line of the song each time Moses read a new stanza. The Netziv says that Miriam composed her own song for the women, which shared the same chorus line as Moses’ song.

But the larger question, which is only addressed indirectly by the commentaries, is: why do we need to know about Miriam’s song?

The Malbim offers an approach that answers this question. He explains that the women asserted themselves, and took their rightful role at the Song of the Sea, because the entire Exodus “occurred only in their merit.” (The Talmud says that it was “in merit of the righteous women in Egypt that the Jews were redeemed.” These women heroically continued to have children, despite the crushing burden of slavery.) The Kli Yakar takes this idea in a different direction, saying that at the Red Sea, women were considered the equals of men, singing in parallel; and that this equality is the goal, and will return again with the future redemption.

Rashi offers a new look at the women’s song. He explains that “the righteous women in that generation were certain that God would perform miracles for them, and so they brought timbrels with them from Egypt (to celebrate).” With this added background, we can understand why the women’s song is so important; the women deserve a special mention because they were the first ones who believed there would be miracles. These righteous women packed hope in their suitcases while everyone else worried about the journey.

A passage in the Talmud gives further details about Miriam’s vision. It explains that when Pharaoh decreed that all male children be thrown into the river, Miriam’s parents decided to stop having children. Why would one want to have a child if there’s a 50% chance they will be killed? Yet their young daughter Miriam had a different view. She argued with her parents, and explained that they must continue to have children; to stop having children entirely would only enable Pharaoh to destroy the Jewish people more quickly. Miriam’s parents listened to her, and had another child, Moses. (Afterwards, Miriam prophesized that this baby would redeem the Jews.) When Miriam’s parents are forced to throw Moses into the river, it is Miriam who stands vigilantly on guard, continuing to hope against hope that there will be a miracle.

Miriam and the other righteous women teach us what hope is about. It doesn’t make sense to shlep musical instruments across a desert in hope of a future miracle. It doesn’t make sense to have children in the misery of slavery. It doesn’t make sense to imagine that a defenseless baby tossed into the river will be the future savior of the Jewish people. And yet they had hope anyway.

It is the very absurdity of hope that makes it valuable. The rational perspective sees the world as it is; this perspective is pragmatic, and is shaped by the facts on the ground. And that is the very weakness of the rational perspective; it automatically enshrines the status quo as “reality.” But there are times when the status quo is unacceptable. We cannot be pragmatic when living as slaves under Pharaoh in Egypt. In such situations, one must imagine something better. And that’s where hope comes in.

Hope isn’t how one understands the world; it is how one changes it. By embracing the greater vision for the future, a person transforms themselves; sharing the vision with others can transform a community. Eventually, if the vision is shared widely enough, one can transform the world.

To dream of a different reality is the first step in making it happen.

These timbrels of hope transformed the Jewish people. Without Miriam, there wouldn’t have been a Moses. Without the Jewish women, there wouldn’t have been another generation of Jews. And now at the Red Sea, the women sing and dance; and this is a dance only they could have dreamt of, a dance that only they knew would happen.

The delegates at the 6th Zionist Congress were Miriam’s heirs. They too embraced a quixotic hope at a time when it seemed absurd. But it was their faith in the future that helped create the State of Israel.

Today, after 15 months of a bruising War, the Jewish people need to learn how to hope again. When I speak to some of my friends in Israel, they cannot even imagine the war ending. It seems impossible to dream of hope after the nightmare of the last 16 months.

But hope is exactly what we need right now. We need to imagine a better future.

We need to follow in Miriam’s footsteps.

Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz is the Senior Rabbi of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in New York.