This Shabbat and the seventh day of Passover we read in the Torah about the threshold between slavery and freedom, fear and faith, silence and song. The people of Israel stand at the edge of the Red Sea. Behind them, the thunder of Pharaoh’s army draws near. Before them, an endless sea.

It is a moment suspended in time — a space where the old world has collapsed, but the new has not yet come into being.

Our Sages speak of Nachshon ben Aminadav, who walked into the waters until they reached his nostrils. Only then did the sea open. His act was not only brave — it was prophetic. Nachshon understood that liberation requires more than escaping Pharaoh. It demands the courage to enter the unknown, to surrender ego, and to trust that the Divine Presence walks with us even into chaos.

The mystics teach that the sea represents the unconscious — the hidden depths of the soul, the world of mystery and unknowing. To walk into the sea is to confront the parts of ourselves that are unredeemed, unspoken, still submerged in fear or doubt. The journey through the sea is not only national, but personal. Each of us must cross through inner waters to reach our own self-realization.

Why does the Torah tell us that the waters stood “as a wall to their right and to their left”? The Hasidic rabbis suggest that when we walk in alignment with our higher purpose, creation itself reconfigures around us. The chaos that threatens to drown us becomes the very path we walk on.

The Shirat HaYam, the Song of the Sea, is not just a song of victory; it is the first collective outpouring of spirit in freedom. It is the voice of a people who have seen the impossible become possible, who have passed through death into life. It is the echo of the soul when it glimpses Divine unity beneath the surface of the world.

This Hag, the seventh day of Pesah, as we chant that ancient song, may we remember: The sea still splits. In our own lives, in our own hearts, we too are called to walk forward — not once, but again and again. The spiritual life is a constant crossing, a perpetual return to the edge, where we are asked to trust, to step, and to believe.

And when we do — when we walk with intention into the unknown — we discover that the path was always there, waiting for us beneath the waves.