From “The Prisoner and Other Tales of Faith” by Rabbi Salomon Alter Halpern and published by Feldheim. Reprinted here with the kind permission of Rabbi Halpern.
And there went a man of the house of Levi, and took to wife a daughter of Levi. And the woman conceived, and bore a son. And she saw that he was a goodly child and she hid him for three months. And when she could no longer hide him, she took for him a box made of reeds, and daubed it with clay and with pitch, and put the child in it; and she laid it in the rushes by the river’s brink. And his sister stood herself from afar, to know what would be with him. And the daughter of Par’o came down to bathe at the river; and her maidens walked along by the river’s side; and when she saw the box among the rushes, she sent her maid to fetch it. And when she opened it, she saw the child: and, see! a boy crying. And she had compassion on him, and said, “This is one of the Hebrews’ children.” Then said his sister to the daughter of Par’o, “Shall I go and call for you a wet-nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for you?” And the daughter of Par’o said to her, “Go!” and the girl went and called the child’s mother. And the daughter of Par’o said to her, “Take this child and nurse him for me, and I will give you your wages.” And the woman took the child, and nursed it. And the child grew, and she brought him to the daughter of Par’o, and he became her son. And she called his name ‘Mosheh’ saying, ‘Because I drew him out of the water.’ (Shemos, 2 : 1 — 10)
It was only mid-morning, and the day was the sixth of the third month, yet it was hotter than on a midsummer noon, and most of the children in the village had gone down to the river. But Miryam had stayed behind; sitting in the shade of the whitewashed hut, her eyes fixed on the distant hills. She was thinking ...
She had much to think about. In her seven years — though people always said she looked and spoke like one much older — she had seen much sadness, and she was trying to find out what it all meant, and how it might end.
Her father had told her the main things, of course: That G-d had a plan in everything, though men could not understand it until it was ripe, and how even now He might be shaping things for the day when He would fulfil His ancient promise. Had He not done wonderful things to make Yosef free and mighty, even whilst his father was mourning him for dead?
A great teacher was Miryam’s father. Indeed, he had come to this part of the Nile valley only to teach his poor brothers, whom Par’o had moved here. He himself could have stayed in Goshen, for he was of the tribe of Levi, a free man.
That was before Miryam was born.
In the year she was born, Par’o had started to make the work so terribly hard for the Hebrews, and stopped paying them for it. That was why she had been called Miryam, her mother had told her, for Miryam meant bitterness. But she did not feel bitter. Whenever she saw some new cruelty, she would think of the day when G-d would make them free and give them the wonderful land to live in.
Meanwhile, of course, it was hard. She often went with her mother to help people who had become ill from hard work and cruel punishments; and although she felt like crying herself, she always tried to cheer them up. “Don’t despair,” she might say. “Do not think of yourselves as slaves! One day we shall all be free and happy again, and then we shall know why G-d sent us all this. Won’t it be lovely when we’ll all have our own fields and trees and houses?”
And the beaten men would smile and say: “Look at her, listen to her! Doesn’t she sound like a little prophetess? Pray G-d that her words come true! But soon, O G-d, soon ...”
And one day her father himself had called her a prophetess, in real earnest. And this was how it happened:
Three years before, just about the time her little brother Aharon was born, Par’o had started a most wicked and terrible thing: he ordered that all baby boys of the Hebrews were to be killed. At first he tried, secretly, to make the midwives strangle them as soon as they were born, and pretend that they had been born dead. But he soon found out that the midwives were not obeying him, so he sent his soldiers to look for newborn babies and throw them into the Nile. Anyone who tried to resist them was tortured to death.
When that happened, her father was sad and serious for many days; then he said to her mother: “I have thought long about what I have to do, and it looks to me that since I can do nothing to save the babies, I must at least see that no more are born to be killed.” He had taken her mother’s hands in his and continued: “I love you dearly, Yochevved; but I must divorce you, until G-d shows His mercy, and stops this bitter affliction!” And they both wept. Miryam wept too, though she hadn’t quite understood what it meant. Later when he had packed his things and was going away, she ran after him and cried: “Where are you going, Daddy? Why are you going away from us?” He had picked her up and kissed her: “Don’t cry, darling. I’m only going to live in the next village for a time; I have to; and you can come over every day and tell me how Mummy and baby are doing.”
Yochevved had taken it quietly. “Your father,” she told Miryam, “is a great and wise man. If he says it is the right thing, you can be sure that it is so.”
But as time went on, Miryam felt more and more sure that it was not the right thing, that something was wrong. She often wanted to say so to her father, but how could one tell one’s father a thing like that — especially such a wise and good man as Amrom?
But one day she had seen her mother handling the baby clothes that Aharon had long outgrown, and crying quietly ... And she had understood that Yochevved was longing for another baby.
Then Miryam had become terribly excited, and run all the way to her father. Panting and flushed, she had fairly shouted at him: “You are even worse than Par’o! He kills the boys, but you are destroying the whole people! Do you know that there is not one baby in the whole village this year? It must be because of what you have done, for people have followed your example!”
She had said more then, but she hadn’t known what it was, until her father had told her later. She had said: “Hear this, Amrom ben Kehoss: The baby that Yochevved is praying for will be the man who will free the Children of Israel from this place!”
But all that Miryam herself remembered was her father rocking her in his arms; when she opened her eyes, he said, ever so tenderly: “Hush, my child, calm yourself. You are right and I was wrong. I should have trusted in G-d, and left it all to Him. Let His will be done.”
Soon the wedding was celebrated — and a strange wedding it was, with Miryam dancing before the bride and groom, and cuddly little Aharon too with his funny steps. And soon there were many such weddings.
And three months ago the baby was born. And the moment he was born, a great light shone in the house, brighter than a summer day. Their friends felt it too, and came rushing to the cottage. They looked at the baby and said: “How good he is, anyone can see that he is good. May he bring goodness and light into this dark, evil time!”
So he was called Toviah which means “G-d is good.” And Amrom patted Miryam and said: “I believe that what you said about this baby will come true. It was G-d who spoke through you. My little daughter is a prophetess!”
She loved the baby. He was so good and so clever. They had to hide him, of course, for the Egyptians often came to see if any babies had been born. They had hollowed out a niche in the wall, behind the bed-curtains, and there baby Toviah slept. He never cried, as if he understood how dangerous it was. But he had no need to cry, for Miryam was always looking in to see if he was awake, and if she saw by the way he moved his lips that he was hungry, she took him straight to her mother.
So far all was well, thought Miryam. If only the Egyptians did not make a real search ...
Suddenly, Miryam became aware of running feet. A minute later, an elderly woman from the next village, a friend of Yochevved, arrived, gasping for breath. Miryam took her inside and she told them her terrible news:
“The soldiers are in our village! Searching every house ... under the beds ... tapping the walls ... They carry babies with them and make them cry, so that our hidden babies cry too. They say they must find every baby now, on their own lives, for this is the last search. The Royal astrologers have told him that the Hebrew leader has been born already, and they must find him. After this, they say, they will leave the babies alone.
