(Delivered April 4, 2026)

Shabbat shalom & moadim l’simcha!

So yesterday, in a panic to write the introductions for the aliyot, I discovered quite by accident that the Torah readings for Shabbat Chol haMoed Pesach for Shabbat Chol haMoed Sukkot are exactly the same. In Sukkot’s moment of embracing the impermanence of life and in Pesach’s moment of exulting in liberation, we scroll back to the same place, to witness God and Moses repairing their connection following the abasement of the Golden Calf. On the face of it, it seems incongruous. Insecurity and freedom take us to the same place. Why? What makes these Torah readings wink at each other from halfway across the calendar? Why might we turn to them in these two different but both liminal moments?

The connection to Sukkot is easier to grasp. Sukkot puts us in a mind of vulnerability—at Sukkot we purposely abandon our shelters and routines to subject ourselves to the elements. We read world-weary Kohelet. We enact all manner of rain-seeking ritual in order to try to influence what cannot be influenced. We make it a point to remind ourselves that we are at the mercy of forces much larger than us, and instead of cowering in a corner with this knowledge, we go outside for the week and enjoy the moonlight. This seems a perfect time to engage a Torah reading that gives us Moses at his most anxious and God saying, in so many words, I’m here. Hold on.

The connection of the exact same Torah reading to Pesach feels a little more tenuous on first glance. Why, with the taste of liberation on our lips, do we pause during the days of Moed and remind ourselves of just how quickly that liberation went wrong, of just how unprepared we actually were for freedom and how foolishly we navigated it?

At our seders, when we heard Moses say in our mind’s ear, “Let My people go!” we might or might not have thought about what he said next. The full phrase that God thunders, through Moses, is שלח את עמי ויעבדוני—let My people go and they will serve Me. The end goal of freedom wasn’t about sleeping late in the morning or heading to the beach at a moment’s notice or (my personal favorite) driving fast with the wind in your face. Rather it was about becoming fully-realized spiritual beings, about committing ourselves to God.

Let’s listen carefully to the Hebrew. In leaving Egypt we go מעבדות לחירות; and what God tells Moses to demand of Pharaoh is שלח את עמי ויעבדוני. You hear it, right? The connection between slavery עבדות and sacred obligation עבודה, are both derived from the same root letters—ayin, bet, daled.

The exodus was about exchanging the עבדות of enslavement to Pharaoh for the עבדות of serving God. I like to say we traded up! 

Still, what followed after the exodus was neither easy nor simple. Our feet had barely dried after crossing Yam Suf when the complaining and the doubt and the rose-colored memories of the good old days of slavery started. Then, when Moses went up Mount Sinai to be with God, and to receive the teachings that would guide our lives for generations to come, the Israelites panicked and made a huge communal mistake. Our Torah reading picks up the story in the aftermath of this mass hysteria, and asks us to explore the question of what comes next after such a rupture. 

The scene between Moses and God reads a little bit like a dialogue between lovers who have just had their first real fight: Moses pleads for more reassurance, testing over and over again to find out—have I really found grace in your eyes? Meanwhile, God offers presence and promises. Back and forth they go, trying to rebuild what has been shaken by a staggering breach of trust. Reconciliation doesn’t come all at once but rather on its own schedule, in this halting, slightly desperate exchange. On it goes until Moses asks the impossible.

 וַיֹּאמַר הַרְאֵנִי נָא אֶת־כְּבֹדֶךָ׃
And he said: oh please show me Your presence.

We know—as God reiterates in verse 20—that humans cannot actually see God and live, but Moses in this moment is standing in for an entire traumatized community. He needs to be strengthened for continued leadership, and he intuits that the Israelites’ slide into idolatry was partly informed by the sheer difficulty of believing in a God they could not see. He needs to know that what he’s teaching the Israelites is going to hold them—and him—steady until they can finally reach their promised destination. 

The best that God can offer, though, is a compromise: that Moses can come close, nestle into a crevice of the rock, and then get a glimpse from behind as God passes by. God says, essentially, Look, there’s a place near Me. Come stand in this crag, 

וְשַׂכֹּתִי כַפִּי עָלֶיךָ עַד־עָבְרִי׃
And I will shelter you with My hand until I have passed by.

This is a gesture of surpassing tenderness. It says: You need something I can’t give. Let’s find another way; let me take care of you in the ways I can, and hope that it’s enough. You may not see me where I am, but you will see where I’ve been.

In fact this seems just the thought to call back to mind in moments of insecurity or transition, in the literal Chol haMoeds of Sukkot or Pesach as much as in the figurative Chol haMoeds of life. These moments when we have lost our way are exactly the moments when it’s comforting to remember our ancestors coped with doubt and trouble as well, and that despite everything, they found a way back to the presence of the divine.

To think of this reconciliation during Sukkot is to reassure ourselves that the unpredictability we experience in our flimsy shelters is countered by a force far greater than ourselves, something we can return to at any moment to knit ourselves back into the fabric of certainty. And reflecting on this reconciliation in the middle of Pesach helps to remind us that there’s more to the God Whose power can bring about a series of plagues—each one more horrific than the last—and lead the Israelites from degradation to exaltation. The mighty hand that pulled the Israelites from the trap of hopelessness and enslavement, and the tender hand that sheltered a shellshocked and grieving Moses are one and the same.