Miriam danced on the shores of the Red Sea after the Exodus. She wanted to praise God and show gratitude for the miracle of the Jewish people's escape from Egypt.

I tried to imagine what kind of dancing could she have done before 600,000 people on the shores of the Red Sea that would have such an impact that thousands of years later we still remember and talk about it.

I envisioned her waving the billowing scarves to make her movements larger and greater. Supposedly there was a men and a women's song. The man's song included the phrase "Mi K' Mocha" (Who is like You, Oh God), which is still used in our prayers today. The complete women's song was lost in antiquity, though the remains of a phrase believed to be part the original women's song was found by archeologists carved in stone. This phrase, which illuminates the beauty of the poetry, substantiates that the song actually existed.

It was Miriam who watched over her younger brother Moses, when his mother hid him in the rushes of the Nile. She was the one who approached the Egyptian princess offering a wet nurse-his own mother- when Pharaoh's daughter chose to adopt him as her own child.

Moses did not lead alone. His brother and sister, Aaron and Miriam, were pivotal in the survival of the Jewish people. The three of them embodied different traits and qualities. It required all three of them to lead the people out of Egypt and through the desert for forty years. During the sojourn, Miriam provided her people with a sense of gratitude and a sense of being nurtured. She provided sustenance for their daily existence, for wherever they stopped for the night, Miriam would point to the spot where they would find water.

Each of these paintings embodies the notion of Joy, and the incredible free spirit of that immersion in Joy. In the last one, jubilation takes flight as it contains a symbolic reference to her being an angel. Her feet literally don't touch the ground, and her fabric is reminiscent of an angel's wings.