The Secret to Success

The Gemara in Sotah says that all of Klal Yisrael waited seven days for Miriam, because she once waited by the Nile to see what would become of her baby brother. That seems like a very large reward for standing and watching. What was she really doing there? The answer goes back to what she told her father Amram about his decree, and to a law about lost objects. It ends during the Holocaust, with Jews hiding in the dark, a shoelace for a wick on the first night of Chanukah, and one bracha the rabbi hesitates before saying.