Pesach 5786 - Wade in the Water

We say it so easily—Chag Sameach.A simple phrase, almost reflexive. A wish, a blessing: may your holiday be filled with joy.

But joy is not always so simple.

Not when the sink is full and the table is still not set.

Not when the guest list carries more tension than comfort.

Not when the credit card bill lingers quietly in the back of the mind, or the job, or the relationship, or the house, or the uncertainty waiting just beyond Yom Tov’s fragile walls.

We say sameach—but sometimes the heart answers back: from where?

And then the Torah sharpens the question.

In Deuteronomy 28:47–48, the rebuke cuts deep: because you did not serve Hashem with joy when you had abundance, you will come to serve in lack, in distress. It reads almost like a taunt, almost unbearable in its implication. As if joy were a switch we simply failed to flip.

But that is too easy a reading. And perhaps, too cruel.

Because the Torah knows something we sometimes forget: joy is not the product of perfect conditions. It never was.

Look at the moment we are reliving now—the closing days of Pesach.

The sea in front.

The army behind.

The people stand there, not redeemed in any settled sense, but suspended. Newly freed, yes, but unmoored. No food beyond what they carried, no map, no certainty. And now, the thunder of chariots behind them.

The panic is immediate, not some abstract concept.

And the Midrash tells us: they made plans.

One group said, we will fight.

Another said, we will surrender.

Another said, we will pray.

Each plan, in its own way, made sense.

Each plan was an attempt to impose order, to carve a path toward survival, maybe even toward relief.

And then the Divine response cuts through all of it:

Move forward.

Not because the plan is wrong.

Not because strategy is forbidden.

But because in that moment, planning becomes a kind of paralysis. A way of circling the sea without ever entering it.

There will always be a sea.

A barrier between where we are and where we imagine joy might live.

A body of water that reflects back all our fears: What if it doesn’t part? What if there is no path? What if this is where it ends?

And the command is almost disarmingly simple: go forward.

Not be happy first.

Not solve everything first.

Not wait until the conditions justify joy.

Go forward.

Step in.

There is something almost audacious here: that joy, in the Torah’s imagination, is not merely reactive. It is not only the result of salvation. It is, in some sense, the catalyst for it. A posture. A defiance. A refusal to let the sea have the final word.

And this is not abstract.

We know this, in our bones.

There is a long, unbroken tradition—especially in the life of African American communities—of cultivating joy not because circumstances were easy, but precisely because they were not. Joy as resistance. Joy as survival. Joy as a quiet insistence that the soul will not be conquered, even when the body is threatened, even when the future is uncertain.

Not naïve joy. Not denial.

But a disciplined, almost stubborn joy.

The kind carried in song, in rhythm, in community.

The kind that says: the sea is here, but so are we.

And maybe that is what the Torah is asking of us in Pesach’s final days.

Not to manufacture a feeling we do not have.

Not to pretend the pressures aren’t waiting for us when Yom Tov ends.

But to take a step.

To choose, even tentatively, to move in the direction of joy.To act as if it is possible, even if we cannot yet see how.

Like the women who carried their tambourines out of Egypt. Not because they had a plan, but because they had a conviction. The victory would come. The song would be needed. The joy would find its moment.

And so they prepared, not for the sea, but for what would happen after it.

Perhaps that is the quiet meaning of Chag Sameach.

Not a declaration that joy is already here.

But a blessing—and a challenge—that we will move toward it.

That we will step forward, even when the waters have not yet parted.

Because sometimes, it is only once we are already in the sea that the path reveals itself.

Chag Sameach.