Slowing down - The Jewish Standard

Sometimes we all just have to take a breath. Inhale. Pause. Exhale.

It’s that time now.

We have all come out of a long winter together. Color is just returning to the world. We have just finished telling the story of the Exodus but we have not yet packed up our dishes again; we’re now getting by on matzah crumbs. We’re counting the Omer already, heading toward Shavuot, already less than a full seven weeks away.

As soon as Pesach is over, we hurtle toward Yom HaShoah, rushing straight from our liberation to the unspeakable horror that is still in living memory. And then, the week afterward, to Yom HaZikron, remembering more sadness, and then the complicated joy of Yom Ha’Atzmaut. And then, of course, full-blown spring, with the threat of a hot summer, and graduations, and endings and new beginnings.

But now, during chol ha-moed Pesach, with the newspaper thinner than usual (even as many of us feel a great deal heavier), many kids on school vacation, local attractions beckoning, and the pace, for once, slowing just a bit, it is time to stop, to look around, and to notice the beauty around us. To glory in it, and to look forward to whatever is bound to come next.

-JP

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