Three good leaders arose for Israel: Moses, Aaron, and Miriam (Ta’anit 9a).

Who are the seven prophetesses? Sarah, Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Abigail, Huldah, and Esther (Megillah 14a).

Why did Miriam stand from afar to see what would become of her baby brother Moses? Because she prophesied: "My mother is destined to bear a son who will redeem Israel" (Shemot Rabbah 1:22).

One book closes; another opens. At the end of the Genesis narrative, the descendants of Jacob and Joseph are well ensconced in Egypt. Unfortunately, their secure tenure is a mirage. A new Pharaoh comes to the throne and the Hebrews are both enslaved and persecuted. Indeed, all of Egypt becomes a slave economy, for at the top of the pyramid resides a god/king.

Enter Miriam, who, not unlike Elizabeth of the New Testament (the mother of John the Baptist, who heralded the birth of the Christian savior), has prescience of Moses’s greatness. When Miriam’s mother, Jochebed, puts Moses in an ark of bulrushes and places it in the Nile, Miriam pursues the tiny vessel, and after seeing it being taken ashore by Pharaoh’s daughter, inveigles the royal heiress to employ Moses’s mother as a nursemaid.

Thus the pathway to Israel’s future has been paved. Although Moses is eventually taken to Pharaoh’s house and raised as an Egyptian prince, his pabulum was Jewish. More significantly, the connection to his sister is never broken. Miriam stands at the head of the fledgling nation; when the camps of Israel would journey in the Wilderness, they would not move until Miriam went before them.

According to the Midrash, Miriam gave birth to Bezalel, the brilliant architect of Israel’s desert tabernacle. From Bezalel came the house of David. This was a compliment to her gift of prophecy and wisdom. But she sometimes was too outspoken. In Chapter twelve of the book of Numbers she and Aaron speak against Moses because he had injudiciously married a Cushite woman. For this sin of calumny the Lord covers Moses’s sister with white spots of leprosy. Moses pleads for the Lord to show mercy, and Miriam is forgiven. Clearly his love and loyalty to her overrode any of the jealousy she had displayed toward him. Given the set of circumstances surrounding Moses’s birth, the full grown baby brother, undeniably the Lord’s greatest servant, had not only been charitable, but correct in exercising his power of forgiveness. She may have been called "Miriam" because at the time of her birth the Egyptians began to "embitter" the lives of the Israelites, but her sense of goodness, her prophetic insight, her redoubtable loyalty toward her brothers and her people, place her at the very highest rung of Israel’s greatest heroes. Miriam, the prophetess.