My Passover: Mundanity of Fighting for Justice

Chol HaMoed, the intermediate days of the holiday, lasts this year from Wednesday night until Sunday night (when we will celebrate the last two “holiday” days of Passover). Ritually, it feels like we’re in limbo. Channeling our ancestors, we’re not longer slaves but we don’t know what it means to be free. Our old habits are still there. Our faith in God is in flux, shaky. We’ve seen miracles in Egypt, it is true, but now we need to learn to trust in God through the mundane struggles of everyday life.

And that’s kind of how this part of Passover feels, too. Our lives more closely match the rest of the year as we work, shop, and return to family routines. Yet we still eat matzah, the bread of affliction, instead of regular bread, and live slightly differently from the “normal days of the year.” At the end of the holiday, next week, we’ll cross the Red Sea, sing to God a new song, but for now, for these middle days, meaning—learning to be free, celebrating the holiday—is found in the small moments.

And there is a lesson to be learned here for those of us who toil in the every day to bring about a world of justice and love. We thrive on both ends of the spectrum, the slavery and the freedom—the horrors of the injustice, the protest in the streets, the cheer of a victory, doing whatever it takes to cross the Sea of Reeds—but that must be balanced with the everyday tasks of bringing about freedom: emails, phone calls, seemingly endless meetings. My kids do not seem to understand that coming to my office to watch me work is not nearly as exciting as the occasional protest we attend as a family! It is here, though, in the small tasks of every day, that the shift to freedom happens. An outstretched arm starts someone on the road to a better life. A casual conversation over coffee gives birth to a world-changing idea. And somewhere in the midst of a flurry of emails, new relationships are forged that help us imagine a new reality, our personal z’man cheireuteinu, our time of redemption. Chol HaMoed illustrates that the journey, recast as small moments, living slightly out of sync with our previous lives, is sustainable until the far-off day when our wanderings end and we reach the Promised Land.

The seders have ended: the questions have been asked and answered, the wine has been drunk and spilled, the haggadot have been put away for another year. But we’re still only halfway through Passover, still eating matzah and still celebrating t’man cheiruteinu, the time of our freedom. We’ve left Egypt and we’re on our journey to the Promised Land.

Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster is Director of Programs for T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights. She lives with her family in Teaneck, New Jersey.