Yesterday I introduced you to Aviva, the heart of “Bring Us Home.” Today I want you to meet the woman who made Aviva who she is — without ever raising her voice, without ever leaving the riverbank. Her mother, Miryam.
Who is Miryam?
Miryam was a temple singer in Jerusalem — just a girl, around sixteen, the night the walls fell. She remembers the gold light in the temple courts. She remembers her own father, Saba Elan, playing the harp beneath her as she sang. And she remembers the soldiers, the fire, the chains — all of it, in the space of one terrifying night.
By the time we meet her again in exile, decades have passed. She’s a mother now, holding her newborn daughter by a river that isn’t home, in a country that doesn’t want her.
And she makes a decision that shapes the entire rest of the story: she decides that Aviva will know Jerusalem too — even if all she can give her is a song.
“Hush Now (The River Lullaby)”
Miryam’s signature song is the lullaby that runs through the entire show — “Hush Now (The River Lullaby).” It’s the song she sings to baby Aviva: a golden city, doves in the morning, a temple full of singing. A whole homeland, folded into a bedtime song for a child who will grow up never having seen any of it.
What gets me about this song is what it actually is, underneath the melody: it’s an act of defiance disguised as comfort. Miryam isn’t just soothing her daughter to sleep. She’s making sure that if Jerusalem is ever going to be rebuilt — in stone or in spirit — it has to survive in someone’s memory first. And if her own memory isn’t enough, she’ll plant it in her daughter’s.
The cost of being the keeper
Here’s what I think people sometimes miss about characters like Miryam: keeping a memory alive isn’t passive. It’s exhausting. It’s lonely. Miryam carries grief for a city most of the people around her — including her own daughter — have never seen and can’t fully understand. She watches Aviva grow up curious about Babylonian songs, Babylonian markets, Babylonian life… and she has to decide, again and again, not to let that frighten her into clinging tighter.
There’s a moment late in the show where Aviva finally asks her the hard question — how do I grieve a home I’ve never had? — and Miryam’s answer isn’t a lecture. It’s something gentler and, I think, truer: “Some things can’t be explained. They can only be carried.”
The passing of the song
Without spoiling too much, I’ll say this: the lullaby Miryam sings to baby Aviva doesn’t stay the same throughout the show. It comes back later — broken, when Aviva starts to forget it under the weight of Babylon’s comfort. And it comes back one more time, near the end, in a moment where the roles reverse completely.
That’s one of my favorite threads in the whole musical, and I can’t wait to do a full “Behind the Song” post on it.
This one’s personal
If you’re a mother — or if you’ve ever been the person in your family who held onto the stories, the faith, the traditions for everyone else — I think Miryam’s going to mean something to you. She’s not flashy. She’s not the one who gets the dramatic confrontation with the king. But without her, there’s no Aviva, and there’s no “Bring Us Home.”
Stay close to the story
💬 Comment below — is there someone in your life who “kept the songs” for you — a parent, grandparent, or mentor who carried faith or memory forward so you could inherit it?
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Tomorrow, meet the man who taught Aviva her first vow — her grandfather, Saba Elan.