שיר של מרים הנביאה | The Song of Miriam, a petiḥah by Rabbi Ruth H. Sohn (1981)

Contributor(s): Ruth H. Sohn

Shared on: 14 March 2017 under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International copyleft license

Categories: Parashat b'Shalaḥ, 7th Day of Pesaḥ

Tags: 20th century C.E., 58th century A.M., אז ישיר Az Yashir, English vernacular prayer, Jewish Women's Prayers, Miriam, Opening Prayers, Openers, Prayers as poems, תפילות קודם התפילה Prayers before Praying, Prayers for Praying

TOGGLE COLUMNS (on/off):

ADJUST COLUMN POSITIONS: select the column header cell and drag it where you want. show me!

COPY INDIVIDUAL COLUMN(S): use CopyTables, a browser extension.

TABLE HELP

Contribute a translation	Source (English)
	I, Miriam, stand at the sea and turn to face the desert stretching endless and still. My eyes are dazzled The sky brilliant blue Sunburnt sands unyielding white. My hands turn to dove wings. My arms reach for the sky and I want to sing the song rising inside me. My mouth open I stop. Where are the words? Where the melody? In a moment of panic My eyes go blind. Can I take a step Without knowing a Destination? Will I falter Will I fall Will the ground sink away from under me?
	The song still unformed– How can I sing?
	To take the first step– To sing a new song– Is to close one’s eyes and dive into unknown waters. For a moment knowing nothing risking all– But then to discover
	The waters are friendly The ground is firm. And the song– the song rises again. Out of my mouth come words lifting the wind. And I hear for the first the song that has been in my heart silent unknown even to me.

“The Song of Miriam” by Rabbi Ruth Sohn was first published as “I Shall Sing to the Lord a New Song,” in Kol Haneshamah: Shabbat Vehagim, Reconstructionist Prayerbook, 1989, 1995 Second Edition. Reconstructionist Press, pp. 768-769. (This poem was also published in several haggadot and other books and set to music by several composers in the U.S. and Israel.) Rabbi Sohn wrote the poem in 1981 as a rabbinical student after immersing herself in the Torah verses and the traditional midrashim about Miriam, and after writing a longer modern midrash about Miriam. Part of this modern midrash was published as “Journeys,” in All the Women Followed Her, ed. Rebecca Schwartz (Rikudei Miriam Press, 2001).

. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike . 4.0 . International .

“שיר של מרים הנביאה | The Song of Miriam, a petiḥah by Rabbi Ruth H. Sohn (1981)” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyleft license.

Ruth H. Sohn

Ruth H Sohn is a rabbi, teacher, spiritual director, and writer. She co-directs the Yedidya Center for Jewish Spiritual Direction and the Morei Derekh Jewish Spiritual Direction Training Program, and she also serves as Director of the Aronoff Rabbinic Mentoring Program and Rabbi of the Lainer Beit Midrash at HUC-JIR in Los Angeles.

Pocket Pinterest Reddit 𝕏 Facebook Telegram WhatsApp SMS Email

Works of related interest:

Memories of a Jewish Lesbian Evening (credit: Linda Eber, Bridges vol. 4 Winter-Spring 1994)

מִרְיָם הַנְּבִיאָה | Miryam haNevi’ah, by rabbis Leila Gal Berner & Arthur Waskow (ca. 1994)

BL Or 1404; 1350-1374; 'Brother Haggadah f7r'

שיר חדש אשיר | Shir Ḥadash Ashir (“Song Anew”) — a traditional piyyuṭ before the Song of the Sea

מִרְיָם קִבְּלָה תּוֹרָה מִסִּינַי | Miriam received the Torah from Sinai, by Rabbah Rinat Safania

Flag of the United States House of Representatives

Prayer of the Guest Chaplain of the U.S. House of Representatives: Rabbi Sidney S. Guthman on 19 March 1981

Prayer of the Guest Chaplain of the U.S. House of Representatives: Rabbi Ely E. Pilchik on 12 May 1981

"I love democracy at Protests against Netanyahu 2020 Jerusalem." (credit: Nir Hirshman Communication, license: CC BY-SA)

שָּׁבוּעַ שֶׁל אַחְוָה לְאֻמִּית | National Brotherhood Week (in Israel), an adaptation of Tom Lehrer’s song by Isaac Gantwerk Mayer

שִׁיר הַגְאוּלָה (החיינו אל) | Shir ha-Ge’ulah (Song of Redemption), by an anonymous author (1940)

prev next

Comments, Corrections, and QueriesCancel reply

Stable Link: https://opensiddur.org/?p=15189

Associated Image:

Hand of Peace Monument, Promenade in Kusadasi, Turkey (Pixabay CC0)

(This image is set to automatically show as the "featured image" in category pages and in shared links on social media.)

Source Data: XML | JSON

Re-formatted: HTML | ODT

Terms of Use: Be a mentsch (a conscientious, considerate person) and adhere to the following guidelines:

Properly attribute the work to Ruth H. Sohn.
Clearly indicate the date you accessed the work and in what ways, if any, you modified it. (If you have adapted the work, let us know so that the contributor might consider endorsing your revision.)
Provide the stable link to this resource: <https://opensiddur.org/?p=15189>.
Indicate that the original work was shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International copyleft license. (To redistribute or remix this work in any format, modified or unmodified, you must refer to the terms of the license under which the work is shared.)

Additional Notes:

The views expressed in this work represent the views of their creator(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the Open Siddur Project's developers, its diverse community of volunteer contributors, or its institutional partners.
We strongly advise against printing sacred texts and art containing divine names as these copies must be regarded with reverence, complicating their casual treatment and disposal.
If you must dispose of a printed sacred text (one containing Divine Names), please locate the closest genizah (often established by a synagogue) and contact its custodians for further instructions. We also recommend using Morah Yehudis Fishman's Prayer for Adding a Work to the Genizah.

Support this work: The Open Siddur Project is a volunteer-driven, non-profit, non-commercial, non-denominational, non-prescriptive, gratis & libre Open Access archive of contemplative praxes, liturgical readings, and Jewish prayer literature (historic and contemporary, familiar and obscure) composed in every era, region, and language Jews have ever prayed. Our goal is to provide a platform for sharing open-source resources, tools, and content for individuals and communities crafting their own prayerbook (siddur). Through this we hope to empower personal autonomy, preserve customs, and foster creativity in religious culture.

ויהי נעם אדני אלהינו עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננה עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננהו "May the pleasantness of אדֹני our elo’ah be upon us; may our handiwork be established for us — our handiwork, may it be established." –Psalms 90:17