(Adapted from my Pesach column for the Jewish Journal and delivered on April 12, 2025)

Chag Sameach!

What a time we live in! By some accountings, Nissan is the first month, and so, in a way, we are at the beginning of the year, even as we’re in the middle. Beginning, middle, or end, the moment we find ourselves in feels tender and fraught. Living in a divided community, in a divided country, in a divided world, we can sense all too plainly the cracks in the foundation. 

Within the Jewish community as a whole, there are people of strong ethical and moral fiber who disagree passionately on fundamental issues regarding the Jewish future. Heartfelt convictions as to what the Israeli government should and should not do vary widely from person to person. And all across the country, we are seeing ever more political polarization, as we grapple with the profound implications of the new regime and its forceful moves to reshape our democracy and our society. The world, meanwhile, is gripped by multiple wars and conflicts—from Israel to Sudan to Ukraine—and by all manner of natural and human-caused disasters. Jews are scared. LGBTQ+ folks are scared. Immigrants are scared.

The literal sense of Mitzrayim—narrow places—and the metaphorical sense of what it was like to be enslaved in Mitzrayim—oppressive, confining—feel all too real as we pray for the release of our hostages still remaining in Gaza and as we watch with agonizing concern as the global trend toward authoritarian extremism heats up, for Jews and for humanity in general.  

The arrival of Pesach seems both implausible and desperately necessary. To contemplate the miracle of redemption in a time of political discord, angst, and rising antisemitism feels chutzpadik at the least, and perhaps even downright absurd. Who can speak of a parting sea when we ourselves are drowning in grief over relentless violence in the Holy Land? Who can sing of freedom when our people—after more than 500 unbearable days—are still in dusty tunnels while their captors gloat? Who can fathom staying up all night to recount miracle upon miracle when we are, individually and collectively, exhausted to the brink of collapse?

And yet when redemption feels decidedly unattainable, that is when we most need to come together and raise our voices, as we remind ourselves and one another that the impossible is actually possible. What better time to remember the signs and wonders with which God signaled that our moment had arrived? What better time to remember the splitting of the sea, an event that set all Israelites on an equal footing, such that, according to Midrash, the lowliest housemaid saw the same glimpses of the divine that Moses himself saw? What better time to remember the way an unassuming, debilitatingly shy person with a too-hot temper grew into the leader who was entrusted with the task of setting God’s people free? 

Everything about Pesach is suffused with possibility: that those who have been downtrodden can rise up, that freedom can come, that things can change. 

Our Pesach Torah reading describes the moment of change like this: 

וּמוֹשַׁב בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל אֲשֶׁר יָשְׁבוּ בְּמִצְרָיִם שְׁלֹשִׁים שָׁנָה וְאַרְבַּע מֵאוֹת שָׁנָה׃
וַיְהִי מִקֵּץ שְׁלֹשִׁים שָׁנָה וְאַרְבַּע מֵאוֹת שָׁנָה וַיְהִי בְּעֶצֶם הַיּוֹם הַזֶּה יָצְאוּ כּל־צִבְאוֹת יי מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם׃

“The Israelites’ sojourn in Egypt was 430 years. And at the end of the 430th year, on that very day,
all of God’s multitudes went out from the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 12:40-41) 

I was struck anew this year by a phrase בְּעֶצֶם הַיּוֹם הַזֶּה (on that very day) that appears not once but twice in the Pesach readings. (It also appears just a few psukim prior to the beginning of our Torah reading, and in the haftarah that we read today.) That cluster of words is so unassuming that we might skip right past it, but like Moses himself, it contains astonishing potential. This is a phrase that shows us that everything has its moment, that there comes a last day for every hardship. 

This profound teaching—that something new is ever possible—is a message of hope, from the Author of hope. It reminds us that the future is God’s time. While we can’t know when the sea will split and the suffering will be behind us, we do know that everything has an endpoint.

And while we wait, the seder invites us to remember: We’ve been in tight spots before. In every generation forces have risen against us. We are much stronger than we’re sometimes given credit for. Our commitment to one another strengthens us yet more.

And every year—even as we end the seder with the bread of misery on our lips—we say L’shanah haba’ah bi’Yerushalayim. Next year in Jerusalem. May it be so, in a world at peace. Chag sameach!