This text based class, in Likkutei Sichos Behaaloscha Volume 18, explores a comment by Rashi linking a gesture of a little girl to a national event 81 years later. When the three-month old Moses lay floating in a basket on the riverbank, where his mother placed him to avoid the decree of the Pharaoh that all make Jewish children must be taken from their parents bosom and drowned, was watched by his seven-year-old sister, Miriam. That is when Batya, Pharaoh’s daughter, came along and rescued the infant who would not stop crying, craving some milk. It was little Miriam who “negotiated” the deal to allow little Moses to be nursed and calmed by his own real mother.

We may never know the full impact that Miriam’s gentle watch had on Moses’ great life. But one thing we know: 81 years later this moment would once again come back in the life of Miriam and Moshe, this time the other way around. Moses, and 3 million Jews, will stand there seven days, waiting for Miriam.