"She sang beyond the genius of the sea...
For she was the maker of the song she sang.
The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea
Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.
Whose spirit is it? We said because we knew
It was the spirit that we sought we knew
That we should ask this often as she sang..."

Wallace Stevens
The Idea of Order at Key West

ORDERING THE WHIRLWIND IS THE task of poets, prophets, and artists, and it is the triumph of tradition. The Passover Seder itself is such an ordering, honing the vivid drama of the Exodus through ritual, allocating a space between what is fabulous and what is formula for the story to be enlivened in each retelling.

Miriam has long walked along the edges of this story, whether balanced on the slippery banks of the Nile, dancing on the promontory over the Sea of Reeds or negotiating the fragile border in the desert between water and thirst. Now it seems, the now of history (and/or, the timbre of the time) has brought us to Miriam's time to sing beyond the genius of the sea, and for us to be able to hear her song. We have arrived at the time to make a place at the table to set Miriam's cup.

A benchmark of this time is the invitational exhibit, Drawing from the Source: Miriam, Women's Creativity and New Ritual, co-sponsored by Ma'yan and the Hebrew Union College, some eighty works--all cups for Miriam. Among this outpouring are those works that are conceived more as concept than actual cup, those that are truly functional pieces for use at the seder table and works in which cup and concept merge resulting in vessels that engage the mind, the eye and the heart--vessels of intention shaped to help us drink of Miriam's tale.

Viewing this exhibit, it is hard not to note the way in which it clearly tracks the distance from the feminist art of the late 70s and the early 80s, the distance from the table set by Judy Chicago in her opus installation of the 1979 Dinner Party....