Rabbi Ilana Krieger Lapides: Pesach and intermission

By Rabbi Ilana Krieger Lapides

(Calgary) – Google maps always plays a role when I teach my B’nai Mitzvah kids their Torah portion. Since every Torah portion comes from our Chumash, (the Five Books of Moses) every student’s portion is related to our people’s redemption from slavery and so every student invariably asks how long it took the Jews to get from Egypt to Eretz Israel.

A quick Google map search shows that if you walk from what is now Cairo to Jerusalem, it would take an average person one hundred and sixty-three (163) hours. Or basically, just under a week.

Now, even taking into account time to sleep, not walking during peak sunny hours, the slow-moving group, the punishing environment of the desert, traveling without a compass, etc.; even taking ALL of that into account, my students usually come to the conclusion that the journey should take maybe six (6) months.  Tops.

And yet, as we all know, it takes our people forty (40) years! Of course, when my students ask, I tell the court-mandated joke that the journey took so long because Moses is a man and didn’t want to ask for directions.

But seriously, what took so long? And why is so much of our Torah (three out of the five books!) focussed around that wandering, in-between, liminal time?

As a musical theater kid, I found an answer in the form of a standard intermission; the wandering in the desert is our people’s intermission. To flog the analogy: If the biblical history of our people was a play, act one is the creation of the world, act two is slavery, and act three is entering the Holy Land.

The wandering in the desert? That’s the intermission.

And just like during a play’s intermission, the wandering is not the end of the story. It’s a break in the action. A chance to take in what has unfolded and prepare for what is still to come.

This happens in our day to day lives: there are seasons when everything feels quieter, slower, or uncertain – times when we feel suspended between chapters, between versions of ourselves, between the life we once knew and the one that has not yet fully revealed itself. In those moments it can be easy to believe that the curtain has come down for good and the story is over.

Spiritual artist Jacqueline Whitney writes about the “intermission theory” stating that the pause in the middle of a story is not a failure of the narrative. It is part of the structure of the story itself. The intermission is the moment when we breathe, reset, and gather strength before the next act begins.

In Hebrew, Egypt is Mitzrayim coming from a root that suggests narrowness, constriction, tight places. Mitzrayim is not only a physical land; it is also a spiritual metaphor. It represents the places in life where we feel trapped, confined, unable to breathe or imagine something different.

At our Seder tables, we retell that sacred moment when, through courage and faith, through signs and wonders, Hashem led our people out of slavery. The story is not only ancient history; it is a reminder that human beings are capable of moving beyond the narrow places that confine us.

So, did we walk directly into the Promised Land after the narrowness of Mitzrayim? No. Instead, we enter the wilderness (Bamidbar) and wander for forty years. At first glance, this part of the story can feel confusing, even frustrating. Why does the journey take so long?

Because the wilderness is not a detour at all. The wilderness is the intermission.

Just as an intermission in a play allows the audience to pause and reflect before the story continues, the desert becomes the sacred pause between acts in the story of the Jewish people. The Israelites had physically left Mitzrayim, but leaving the land of Egypt did not immediately erase the habits, fears, and limitations that hundreds of years of slavery had carved into their lives.

The wilderness becomes the space where transformation begins to take shape. In the desert, our people receive the Torah at Sinai, we build the Mishkan, we learn to rely on manna that appears each morning. Slowly, step by step, we begin to see ourselves not as a people defined by slavery, but as a community bound by covenant.

And finally, after that loooong intermission, Act Three begins: we enter the land promised to our ancestors. There, the covenant must be lived in everyday life – in fields and villages, in justice and compassion, in the rhythms of a society guided by G-d and Torah.

Seen this way, our wandering in the desert is not empty, wasted time. It is the sacred space that allowed redemption to deepen and mature.

Pesach reminds us that liberation from Mitzrayim, from the narrow places, is always possible. The wilderness teaches us that growth often unfolds in the spaces between departure and arrival. We learn that the journey toward freedom is not a single moment, but a process – one that calls for the quiet faith that the next chapter of the journey is still unfolding before us.

When we find ourselves in a season that feels like a pause – between chapters, between identities, between what was and what will be – try not to mistake that stillness for a finale.

Intermission is not the end of the play.

It is the sacred space where we process what has happened, the place where we rest, where our souls quietly prepare for what is unfolding.

And one day we may look back and realize that the intermission was not empty time at all – it was the moment that made our next act possible. The moment that allowed the next chapter of our life to become even more beautiful than the first.

From my family to yours, wishing you all a meaningful and kusher Pesach.

Rabbi Ilana Krygier Lapides is an independent Rabbi in Calgary. Her Rabbinic Practice is at RockyMountainRabbi.com