“The tablets were God’s work, and the writing was God’s writing, incised upon the tablets” (). Do not read, “incised,” (harut), rather [read] “freedom” (herut)—for no person is truly free except the one who labors in Torah. ()

[Passover] is the time of our freedom (zeman herutenu). (Passover Liturgy)

Freedom in biblical and rabbinic Judaism is a highly complex idea. Consider the mishnah above. At first glance one might think the law, the Ten Commandments carved on the two tablets, would be limiting, constraining human freedom. Counterintuitively, the Sages argue that true freedom only comes from an engagement with Torah! How might “laboring in Torah” and living a life according to the demands of the Torah induce freedom?

I am reminded of the midrash where God offers the Torah to the nations of the world before offering the Torah to the Israelites. Each of these nations rejects the “gift” of the Torah because it is too constraining (). While the Rabbis in this mishnah speak of Torah as an experience of freedom, they at other times also speak of “the yoke of heaven” or “the yoke of the mitzvot” when referring to living a life observing the Torah’s commandments. A beast walking under the burden of its yoke is not the imagery Rousseau or Hobbes might employ to describe their notions of a life lived in freedom!

Perhaps more problematic is the complexity present in the Bible’s description of the liberty granted to the Israelites with their redemption from the slavery of Egypt. God commands Moses to go to the Israelites and introduce them to the God of their ancestors with the words, “I am the Lord. I will free you from the labors of the Egyptians and deliver you from their bondage” (). And yet God redeems the Israelites from the “house of bondage” and from Pharaoh only to substitute another master: “For it is to Me that the Israelites are servants: they are My servants, whom I freed from the land of Egypt” (). Acknowledging at once the irony of this situation as well as its religious meaningfulness, the Rabbis of the Midrash depict God reassuring the Israelites, “You are My servants and not servants to servants!” (Mekhilta Masekhet Bahodesh, 5).

Put simply: What are these often-conflicting notions telling us about biblical and rabbinic conceptions of freedom and its relationship to a life of Torah?

How are we to experience zeman herutenu, the season of our freedom?

Modern western or American notions of freedom challenge some of these biblical and rabbinic definitions of freedom. Isaiah Berlin, in one of his more influential essays, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” made an interesting distinction between two types of freedom—negative and positive. He defined “negative freedom” as the freedom from constraints and coercion. “Positive freedom” constituted the freedom to realize one’s destiny and best interests. Ultimately, Berlin thought positive freedom was susceptible to political abuse and might be a source of oppression for some. He argued that the safest form of freedom was “negative” freedom—the absence of constraints and interference. For many of us, this iteration of freedom has become our ultimate moral value.

However, the rhythm of this season in the Jewish calendar provides an alternative understanding to the value and meaning of zeman herutenu and helps resolve some of the tensions and ambivalence toward freedom in our sources.

With the second night of Passover we begin the count-up to Shavuot, unique among all the festivals in the Torah. Each festival in the Torah has a specific date, in a specific month in the Jewish calendar. Only Shavuot is not anchored in our calendar, and yet we know we celebrate it on the same date every year—always on the fiftieth day after the second day of Passover. Indeed, the Torah mandates that we engage in this counting every year from the second night of Passover to the offering of the grain on the holiday of Shavuot.

The rabbis of the medieval period were the first to articulate that this counting is not exclusively about the offering of the new grain that was brought while the Temple still stood. We count from Passover to Shavuot because these two holidays are conceptually tied to one another. Passover is the holiday of our liberation and freedom. Shavuot, according to the Rabbis, is the holiday of the receiving of the Torah—the holiday where we enter our covenantal relationship with God.

Freedom (Passover) without Shavuot (Torah) is incomplete; and Shavuot (Torah) would be impossible without Passover—the holiday that gave us the freedom to enter into this relationship with God. A life of Torah is not a life of freedom. Freedom is not an absolute value for the Rabbis, or for the Bible. Freedom is utilitarian. The freedom of Pesah gives us the opportunity to enter into relationship with God.

Like every human relationship, a relationship with God limits our freedom. Lovers, friends, mothers and daughters, fathers and sons—every human relationship that we freely enter into and continue to be engaged with limits our choices and inevitably comes with responsibilities. And yet we choose to voluntarily enter these relationships. Ultimately, we believe that a life lived in relationship, deeply connected and responsible to someone is more meaningful than a life lived where we may possess the unconstrained freedom to act.

Counting up to Shavuot reminds us that a life lived in relationship with others and with God, with all the attendant responsibilities that flow from these relationships, is more meaningful than a life lived free of constraints. Each day with our counting we are asked to transform our freedom into a covenantal relationship with God that will allow us to create lives rich in responsibility, and thus, meaning.

This commentary was originally published in 2018.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee and Harold (��”l) Hassenfeld.

Part of the Learning Series,��Seasons of Responsibility: InterreligiousConversationson Environmental Justice and Repair

Session Sources and Links

With Rabbi Laura Bellows, Director of Spiritual Activism & Education, Dayenu: A Jewish Call to Climate Action, and Joe Blumberg, Rabbinical Student, 91�첥

At the heart of Passover is a question that feels urgent today: how do we move forward when the future feels uncertain and frightening? This session explores the Crossing of the Sea through midrash and contemporary thought, treating imagination as a muscle that must be strengthened in times of crisis. As we conclude Seasons of Responsibility, we’ll shift focus from individual anxiety to collective responsibility, inviting participants to consider how shared storytelling, community, and action help bring the world we long for into being.

About the Speakers

Rabbi Laura Bellows works to build climate-resilient, spiritually-rooted, justice-seeking communities centered in Jewish wisdom. She has served as a curriculum and ritual designer, outdoor experiential educator, program manager, artist, and facilitator in Jewish and inter-religious spaces. Laura studied Environmental Studies at Oberlin College and was ordained at Hebrew College, where she recently lead Prozdor and Teen Learning programs. She moonlights as a soferet (scribe) and freelance rabbi for couples and communities throughout the Boston area. 

Joe Blumberg is a fourth-year rabbinical student at the Jewish Theological Seminary, and the Senior Rabbinic Fellow at B’nai Jeshurun on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He previously worked as an educator at Brown RISD Hillel and spent a year as a Fulbright scholar in Jerusalem, where he also studied at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies. Joe was a 2022-2023 rabbinical student fellow at Dayenu: A Jewish Call to Climate Action, where he advised Jewish communities on their climate justice work. He has served as a teacher and prayer leader around the country, most recently as a rabbinic intern at Congregation Shearith Israel in Dallas, Texas, and Beth Israel Congregation in Bath, Maine. Joe holds a B.A. in American History from Yale. 

About the Series

Across Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Hindu traditions, spring is a season of reflection, renewal, and ethical commitment. Grounded in holidays from Tu Bishvat and Lent to Ramadan, Holi, and Passover, this interreligious series explores responsibility, repair, and leadership in the face of urgent ecological challenges. Together, participants consider how religious wisdom can inspire ethical action and collective hope. 

Across Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Hindu traditions, the early spring season is a shared period of reflection, renewal, and ethical clarity. While rooted in different stories and practices—from Tu BiShvat to Lent and Easter, from Ramadan to Holi and Passover—these holidays collectively invite communities to consider how human choices shape the world we inhabit.

This series brings together people to explore questions of responsibility, agency, and repair in the face of urgent ecological challenges. Each session will examine pressing environmental issues through an interreligious lens, highlighting how wisdom traditions can inform ethical action and public leadership.

The series uses the spring season as a narrative frame: a moment when many communities turn inward, commit to repair, and seek renewal. Through interreligious dialogue, we aim to illuminate how diverse traditions encourage accountability, resist misinformation, and nurture hope and collective responsibility in a rapidly changing world.

Organized by the 91�첥 Division of Lifelong and Professional Studies and Milstein Center for Interreligious Dialogue

Programming Partners include The Center for Earth Ethic, Dayenu the Institute on Religion, Law and Lawyer’s Work (Fordham University), Jewish Climate Trust

Thank You for Your Participation

And Moses took with him the bones of Joseph, who had exacted an oath from the children of Israel, saying, ‘God will be sure to take notice of you: then you shall carry up my bones from here with you.’ (Exod. 13:19)

Consider the scene: after hundreds years of slavery, the Israelites, at long last, are preparing to depart. They are frantically gathering their belongings—gold, silver, all their earthly possessions—and scrambling to prepare food for their journey. In this urgent rush, Moses, rather than attending to the needs of the people and their immediate concerns, embarks on a singular mission: to retrieve the bones of Joseph, fulfilling a centuries-old promise. It begs the question: Why, in the midst of these epic events, does the Torah highlight this seemingly minor detail? What is the significance of Moses’s dedication to this task, his resolute commitment to honoring a promise made generations ago?

Moses’s decision here is profound. In a defining moment he demonstrates that even in death, and especially in life, we never—ever—leave anyone behind. Moses, it seems, understood a fundamental and universal truth: our actions matter. Our behaviors express our deepest commitments, and his action embodies our most central and essential conviction: the sanctity of human life. It’s not happenstance that the Israelites’ journey from slavery to freedom begins here, with Moses modeling this foundational tenet.

It’s also not coincidental that, as referenced earlier, the story of Joseph’s remains doesn’t end here. Although the details remain elusive in the biblical text, it is clear in Sefer Yehoshua (the book of Joshua) that Joseph’s remains are carried throughout the desert and, eventually, reach the Promised Land: 

The bones of Joseph, which the Israelites had brought up from Egypt, were buried at Shechem, in the piece of ground which Jacob had bought for a hundred kesitahs from the children of Hamor, Shechem’s father, and which had become a heritage of the Josephites. (Josh. 24:32)

The Talmud continues to fill in the story:

And all those years that the Jewish people were in the wilderness, these two arks, one a casket of a dead man, Joseph, and one the Ark of the Divine Presence, i.e., the Ark of the Covenant, were traveling together . . .  (BT Sotah 13a)

To understand this powerful pairing, we must first confront the origin of these bones, the place from which they were carried. Our experiences in Egypt are central to our collective story. We know the depths of slavery, both physical and spiritual. We, like Joseph, understand what it means to be cast into a pit, yearning for light and dreaming of return. This pain teaches us the fundamental lessons of our people: to care for the vulnerable and to champion justice. Our past, even its most painful chapters, travels with us.

But as we learned, the ark holding Joseph’s remains didn’t travel alone; it found its companion in the Ark of the Covenant. With the Ten Commandments encased inside, we have been blessed with God’s revelation and Divine wisdom; we have been bequeathed the tools for building a holy, just community and the belief in its possibility. Together, these two arks remind us that we can hold both immense pain and unwavering hope.

In these difficult days, I’m finding new strength in these lessons:

Even in moments of great struggle and unprecedented change, we must never abandon our fundamental obligations. And in recent months, we have borne witness to this principle. It has been nearly 600 days since October 7, 2023, yet day in and day out, week after week, throughout Israel, the streets are filled demanding the release of the hostages in Gaza. (Indeed, these calls are echoed in communities throughout the world.)

The people’s persistence embodies the legacy of Moses’s leadership: a refusal to abandon those who have been taken; an enduring commitment to human dignity; and a staunch resolve to act with conviction and integrity, however dark the current moment. This resilience and relentlessness are also what it means to carry both arks: to hold our pain and our promise, our memory and our vision.

On the seventh day of Pesah, we commemorate not just the miracle of the Sea splitting, but also the courage required to step into uncertain waters. The Israelites moved forward with the history of their bondage and the hope for freedom. Today, may we have the courage to do the same—to move forward while carrying the full weight of our past with the belief that a different and better reality is not only possible but within our grasp.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l). 

Download Sources

With Rabbi Jan Uhrbach, Director of the Block / Kolker Center for Spiritual Arts

In preparation for your seder, Rabbi Jan Uhrbach, Director of the Block / Kolker Center for Spiritual Arts, led a thought-provoking session, exploring a Talmudic story that reflects key themes of Passover, raising profound questions about free will, obligation, and inclusion. How do we determine our purpose? Who are our fellow travelers, and what do we owe them? This discussion offers new insights to bring to your Passover table.

About the Series

What’s Next: New Ways of Engaging Jewish Sources 

91�첥 is well-known as a hub of innovative scholarship and a center of academic Jewish Studies. Recently, 91�첥 has launched programs in Biblical Hebrew, Pastoral Care, and Teen Learning, offering accessible entryways into the Jewish textual tradition. Explore how 91�첥 is bringing together new modes of learning with classical sources to meet the needs of today’s world. Sessions will give participants a taste of the ideas and teaching that are central to these programs

וַיֵּט֩ מֹשֶׁ֨ה אֶת־יָד֜וֹ עַל־הַיָּ֗ם וַיָּ֨שׇׁב הַיָּ֜ם לִפְנ֥וֹת בֹּ֙קֶר֙ לְאֵ֣יתָנ֔וֹ וּמִצְרַ֖יִם נָסִ֣ים לִקְרָאת֑וֹ וַיְנַעֵ֧ר יְהֹוָ֛ה אֶת־מִצְרַ֖יִם בְּת֥וֹךְ הַיָּֽם

וַיָּשֻׁ֣בוּ הַמַּ֗יִם וַיְכַסּ֤וּ אֶת־הָרֶ֙כֶב֙ וְאֶת־הַפָּ֣רָשִׁ֔ים לְכֹל֙ חֵ֣יל פַּרְעֹ֔ה הַבָּאִ֥ים אַחֲרֵיהֶ֖ם בַּיָּ֑ם לֹֽא־נִשְׁאַ֥ר בָּהֶ֖ם עַד־אֶחָֽד

וּבְנֵ֧י יִשְׂרָאֵ֛ל הָלְכ֥וּ בַיַּבָּשָׁ֖ה בְּת֣וֹךְ הַיָּ֑ם וְהַמַּ֤יִם לָהֶם֙ חֹמָ֔ה מִֽימִינָ֖ם וּמִשְּׂמֹאלָֽם

Moshe held his arm out over the sea, and at the break of day the sea returned to its normal flow, and the Egyptians fled from it, but God propelled the Egyptians into the sea.The waters turned back and covered the chariots and the riders of all the troops of Pharaoh who had come with them to the sea. Not a single one of them remained. But the Israelites had gone through the sea on dry land, for them the waters were like walls to their right and to their left. (Exod. 14: 27-28)[1]

What follows in the text of the Torah itself is unbridled jubilation. We read “Az Yashir,” a triumphant song of military might in which we are told ” That song, found in chapter 15 of Shemot, is part of the daily liturgy established by the rabbinic authorities.

Lest we miss the point, takes the death of the Egyptians by water as a chance to make a larger point: Israel’s enemies die in ways fitting to their wickedness. “Egypt was lashed in water because they glorified themselves through water [by killing Jewish babies in the Nile].”^[2] The Midrash then spends 12 pericopes detailing the deaths of the wicked men of the Bible from the generation of the flood to Nebuchadnezzar, Babylonian conqueror of Jerusalem. In classic midrashic fashion, this text utilizes other biblical verses to flesh out the imagery of the stories. The result is a series of violent vignettes, with the midrash dwelling on the “rightness” of the punishments of wicked people.

Tanhuma’s delight in the violent deaths of the wicked speaks to a satisfaction that can be derived from violence. Freud, in one of his earliest works, argued that violence, even abstracted violence through language, was a mechanism for working through trauma. “The reaction of an injured person to a trauma has really only then a perfect ‘cathartic’ effect if it is expressed in an adequate reaction like revenge.”^[3] Freud lends his imprimatur here to the joy that humans can take in watching their foes suffer. In the absence of real violence, he believes humans can have similar catharsis from verbal or artistic depictions of suffering. The delight in this rabbinic text may be understandable, but it can trouble those of us committed to the universality of God’s creations.

Luckily for us, the rabbinic tradition never speaks with only one voice. This moment of violent catharsis comes with ambivalence for the Rabbis. In one of the most famous midrashim, we get insight into God-the-universalist’s reaction to the death of Israel’s foes:

אָמַר רַבִּי שְׁמוּאֵל בַּר נַחְמָן אָמַר רַבִּי יוֹנָתָן: מַאי דִּכְתִיב ״וְלֹא קָרַב זֶה אֶל זֶה כׇּל הַלָּיְלָה״? בְּאוֹתָהּ שָׁעָה בִּקְּשׁוּ מַלְאֲכֵי הַשָּׁרֵת לוֹמַר שִׁירָה לִפְנֵי הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא. אָמַר לָהֶן הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא: מַעֲשֵׂה יָדַי טוֹבְעִין בַּיָּם וְאַתֶּם אוֹמְרִים שִׁירָה לְפָנַי

Rabbi Shmuel son of Nachman says in the name of Rabbi Yohanan, “Why does the Torah say [in Exodus 14:20] ‘[the Israelites and Egyptians] did not come near one to the other all night?’ In that moment, the ministering angels requested to sing a song before the Holy one, blessed be he. The Holy one, blessed be he said to them, ‘The works of my hands are drowning in the sea, and you would sing a song before me?!’” (Sanhedrin 39b)

By having God himself refer to the Egyptians as “the works of my hands,” the midrash reminds us of the overriding commonality in the human condition. From the perspective of God, there is no joy in violent death and suffering.

This midrash is today beloved for its humanistic bent. It is often employed as a demonstration of the pathos of rabbinic Judaism. It is not, however, more or less authoritative than the pornographic violence of Tanhuma. Rabbinic Jews—like the Israelites in the Torah—had both the capacity to see the divine spark in all of God’s creatures, and also had the drive towards aggression as a way to face their own trauma.

We are the same. There are moments in our lives as Jews when we face the trauma of the world around us—in America and in Israel, with our families and in public—and feel an inclination towards cathartic violence, whether rhetorical or real. That is human, and it is Jewish. But equally human and equally Jewish is to meet the drive with what to look at our erstwhile targets and see the humanity within. We are the Israelites, but we are also the Egyptians.

This redemptive power of knowing that we are both aggressor and aggrieved underpins the yirah (awe/fear) at the core of our relationship with God. when God warns the Israelites of what will happen to them if they fail to keep the covenant, medieval commentator The Israelites leaving Egypt saw their foes suffering, and they did rejoice, but Rashi tells us that they also were able to see that this suffering was not something they would necessarily be spared. Even the chosen people are vulnerable to suffering, and though we may have base passions, we also have the capacity to rise above them when we see the humanity in the other.

Even at moments when we see our foes wracked with pain, perhaps pain that we feel they deserve, we have the opportunity, and the obligation, to see ourselves in them. Only this can stop the cycle of violent trauma that persisted in our parsha, where the victims glorified retributive violence and the sea became littered with the corpses of the work of God’s hands.

[1] Translations by Dr. Phil Keisman

^[2] Note that in his translation on Sefaria.org, Samuel Berman explains “glorified themselves by water” as referencing Pharaoh’s claiming that he created the Nile in Ezekiel 29:3. This requires ignoring the use of the verb “שנתגאו” in its plural form in order to make Pharaoh the subject of the sentence.

^[3] Joseph Breuer and Sigmand Freud, Studies in Hysteria. Translation A. A. Brill. (Nervous and Mental Health Disease Publishing, 1936).

What plague do you see outside your window? Fire and smoke, drought, disease, or gun violence? Or perhaps you, like the Israelites, are spared while your neighbors experience devastation. Deportation, infestation, or discrimination—whether natural or human-made, these experiences evoke the same fear that the Egyptians felt. Is our darkness as dark as their darkness? Are our plagues as terrible as the ones that the Egyptians experienced?

In Exodus 11:5, Moses tells Pharaoh of the final, most horrific plague:

  וּמֵ֣ת כׇּל־בְּכוֹר֮ בְּאֶ֣רֶץ מִצְרַ֒יִם֒ מִבְּכ֤וֹר פַּרְעֹה֙ הַיֹּשֵׁ֣ב עַל־כִּסְא֔וֹ עַ֚ד בְּכ֣וֹר הַשִּׁפְחָ֔ה אֲשֶׁ֖ר אַחַ֣ר הָרֵחָ֑יִם וְכֹ֖ל בְּכ֥וֹר בְּהֵמָֽה׃

And every [male] first-born in the land of Egypt shall die, from the first-born of Pharaoh who sits on his throne to the first-born of the slave girl who is behind the millstones; and all the first-born of the cattle. 

The death of the first-born son would strike all Egyptian families from the richest and most powerful to the slaves who labor alongside the Israelites. The Torah: A Women’s Commentary suggests that “the intent of this act is to affect all Egyptian households, from the highest male aristocracy to the lowest female slave. The Torah is not concerned with the guilt or innocence of any specific victim, nor with the ethical implications of blanket punishments; the focus remains resolutely on exemplifying God’s supreme power.” It doesn’t matter that Pharaoh is the one calling the shots, refusing to let the Israelites go. The plagues impact all Egyptians.

Furthermore, the Torah does not tell us how each plague impacted different groups of Egyptians. We don’t know if the locusts were as bothersome to Pharoah’s courtiers as they were to the Egyptian slave girl behind the millstones. However, we do know the plagues were “the most severe they had ever been” and “the most severe ever will be.” Regarding the locusts, Exodus 10:14 states:

לְ֠פָנָ֠יו לֹא־הָ֨יָה כֵ֤ן אַרְבֶּה֙ כָּמֹ֔הוּ וְאַחֲרָ֖יו לֹ֥א יִֽהְיֶה־כֵּֽן׃

[N]ever before had there been so many, nor will there ever be so many again.

If the locusts in Egypt were “the worst locusts of all time,” all subsequent human experiences with locusts must be less bad, right? 

Rashi and Hizkuni both wrestle with later examples of really bad locusts in Tanakh, such as those in Joel. Because Rashi and Hizkuni need Tanakh to be correct in stating that the Egyptian experience of locusts is “the worst of all time,” they need to solve the inconsistency of Joel having horrific locusts. Hizkuni quotes and agrees with Rashi’s take, saying:

ואחריו לא יהיה כן, “and there will never be a plague of locusts like this;” according to Rashi, the meaning is “a single type of locust.” Seeing that the Bible records other plagues of locusts at least as severe (Psalms 105:34, Joel 1:4), and Rashi was surely aware of this, we must understand the words of Rashi as referring to a single species of locusts at the same time. In the days of Joel ben Patuel each type of locust came separately, one after the other.

By distinguishing between different species of locusts, Rashi and Hizkuni allow all locust plagues to be “the worst of all time.”

Perhaps Rashi and Hizkuni are right to narrow the definition of the plagues. While we need to understand that what the Egyptians experienced was “the worst possible” experience of locusts and that their collective cry over the deaths of the first-born sons was “the loudest cry there could possibly be,” the depths of their despair do not diminish the depths of our despair today. The Torah needs to be clear that the Egyptians experienced horrible pain so that we understand that our freedom came at a cost to others. That clarity doesn’t take away from the pains we experience today. We face “different species of locusts.” Our cries of mourning hit a different pitch. Just as their grief was “the worst possible” grief, so too, our grief is “the worst possible grief.” We don’t have to compete for who has it hardest during a plague because we all do. 

Of course, those with the least power and privilege face the hardest recovery from plagues. The Egyptian slave girl likely starved when the locusts devoured the crops, while Pharaoh remained well-fed. However, Rashi and Hizkuni’s insights remind us that grief and despair do not need to be qualified to be valid. Losing a home is materially harder to recover from for a low-income family than a celebrity family, but the grief for both families is “the worst that has ever been” and “the worst there will ever be.” We can acknowledge privilege without diminishing pain. 

By illustrating the depths of the Egyptians’ despair, Parashat Bo allows us to feel the depths of our own. When we give ourselves permission to feel our pain and acknowledge its reality, we can move through it and beyond it. Living a life filled with plagues can harden our hearts. Honoring our grief—and the grief of others—can soften them again. 

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l). 

I began to realize that the only place where things were actually real was at this frontier between what you think is you and what you think is not you. . .

But it’s astonishing how much time human beings spend away from that frontier, abstracting themselves out of their bodies, out of their direct experience, and out of a deeper, broader, wider possible future that’s waiting for them, if they hold the conversation at that frontier level.

—David Whyte, speaking with Krista Tippett, “,”
On Being, April 6, 2016

On the seventh day of Passover (Shevi’i shel Pesah),��we reached the frontier of our existence:Yam Suf, the Sea of Reeds. We had known slavery intimately, becoming deeply comfortable in Egypt even as we clamored to leave. And after all the plagues and darkness and death, we arrived, trembling, at the water’s edge, about to surface and breathe the unfamiliar air of freedom for the first time.

Many people who have imagined the crossing of the sea, myself included, have pictured the sea splitting and the Israelites walking together down a pathway that moments before had been underwater—a yellow brick road, of sorts, from Mitzrayim to the Promised Land:

And the people of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground; and the waters were a wall to them on their right hand, and on their left.

()

This image suggests that once God split the sea, the rest of the journey across was simple—dry, paved, neat, and requiring nothing from the Israelites themselves. Apart from the midrash about Nahshon’s bold entry into the waters before they parted (), was it really that simple for each individual Jew to make that crossing? Was it really so easy to leave the pain behind and cross to the other side of the sea, and then immediately burst into song?

Before this moment, when the Israelites were still stuck on the near side of the sea, their pain was visceral. They feared that they would be trapped and enclosed in the wilderness (nivukhimhem ba’aretz����]), and Moses and the Israelites cried out in confusion, fear, and panic. Rashi proposes that the word�Ծ����ܰ�󾱳���here, translated as “entangled” or “perplexed,” is connected (by shared root lettersbet�����Ի���khaf) to words for streams of tears, as in����’e�������habakha(“the valley of tears”) from Psalms, which we know better from “Lekha Dodi.”

Happy is the man whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways, which, passing through the valley ofBakha/tears, make it a place of springs; the early rain also covers it with blessings.

()

Too long have you sat in the valley of tears (����’e�������habakha),
and God will have abundant compassion on you.

(Lekha Dodi)

The Israelites approached the Sea with salty tears streaming down their cheeks, and these tears were the very keys to the splitting of the sea. The tears of the Israelites unlocked the salt water of the sea, allowing it to part, opening the channel for seeing the blessing in pain and the fierce hope that can emerge from deep sadness.

Because, maybe, crossing the sea wasn’t quite like walking down a pathway from one place to another. Maybe it was more like what’s happening in every moment in our bodies on the cellular level, as molecules and chemicals pass through the receptors in a cell membrane. If you remember back to your high school biology class, in order for a particular protein to enter into a cell, it has to have the right shape to fit into a receptor located on the surface of the cell membrane itself. Like a key into a lock, it can cross through the door and enter only if it is the right shape and size. Without the tears, Moshe’s staff could not split the sea, and even God’s power could not make the waters part. Perhaps those tears shed on the bank of the sea were the key that unlocked the power that made splitting the salty water possible.

Kriat yam suf, the splitting of the sea and crossing through to the other side, is happening at every moment as we witness miracles at the molecular level, on the surface of our own skin. It is not far away in the past, or up in the heavens. Living at the frontier of one’s existence is the receptivity to the immediacy of now, the pain and the tears of right now, the joy of now, holding the keys to unlock, transform, and open the gate to whatever is to come next.

Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy.
One who goes forth weeping, bearing the seed for sowing,
shall come back with shouts of joy, bringing sheaves with them.

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This commentary was originally published in 2016.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Holiday Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).