This Year in Jerusalem: Passover in a Time of War

For our Hebrew Union College community in Israel, Passover did not arrive all at once. It unfolded slowly over days of gathering, learning, creating, and preparing, with each moment shaped by the weight of war.

In the weeks leading up to the holiday, students, faculty, and staff marked the month of Nisan through a series of shared experiences that blended ritual with reflection. Mornings of prayer gave way to study sessions on freedom and redemption, while workshops invited participants to engage the themes of the season with their hands as well as their minds: crafting seder plates, exploring diverse haroset traditions, and delving into midrash and Jewish thought.

There were moments of creativity and moments of service. Community members prepared meals for those in need, gathered for conversations about the evolving meaning of liberation, and joined in a Seder of Solidarity, an opportunity to enter the holiday grounded in healing and shared hope. Music, art, and text became pathways for processing a complex reality, offering space to hold grief alongside resilience.

By the time the seders began, the community had already been shaped by this collective journey. Around tables across the city, the familiar rituals carried the imprint of the days that came before them. The story of leaving Egypt felt closer, more immediate, an ancient narrative refracted through the lived experience of this moment.

This year in Jerusalem, Passover was not only remembered: it was built, step by step, as a community turned toward one another in solidarity and hope.

This Passover, the words of liberation were spoken quietly, carefully, as if they could break. The ancient story met lives shaped by distance, danger, and the constant presence of threat. Freedom was no longer a memory to be recalled, but a question pressed into the present moment. In returning to the story under these conditions, we discovered its enduring power: the telling itself became an act of faith.

- Rabbi Talia Avnon-Benveniste, Director of the Israel Rabbinical Program

As Passover approached, I found many of the teachers in our Jewish Democratic Education Labs program carrying a deep sense of despair. Years of wars from within and without have taken a visible toll on Israeli youth, and this reality has weighed heavily on those educators who remain committed to Jewish-democratic education. There is something deeply moving in the connection between movement and hope. Research often points to the link between physical movement and a more optimistic outlook, an idea that feels especially powerful in these days of wars from within and without. The Bible, too, seems to recognize that liberation is not completed in a single moment. At the beginning of the journey, "they did not listen to Moses, because of their broken spirit and cruel bondage" (Exodus 6:9), and later, in the wilderness, "the soul of the people became impatient on the way" (Numbers 21:4). The distance from Egypt to the Land of Israel was not so great, and yet the Israelites walked for forty years. Perhaps those long years were needed not only to cross the desert, but to slowly root out despair itself, until a people broken by slavery could begin to carry hope again.

As we reflected together with the program's teachers, a shared insight began to take shape: in times like these, perhaps the most important thing we can do for the nearly 3,000 students our program reaches is to nurture in them the capacity to believe in, and hope for, a better future. Not by turning away from pain, complexity, or conflict, but by helping them face these realities with courage, honesty, and the faith that something better can still be built.

- Nimrod Smilanski, Ph.D., Educational Director of the Jewish Democratic Education Labs