A Passover Reflection on Walls That Hold You Back

We tell the tale every year around the dinner table. 

This Passover reflection keeps returning to a single image — not the plagues, not the seder plate, not even the ten commandments. It’s the walls.

The Israelites quickly pack up and rush out of Egypt. No time to let the bread rise. In haste, they gather their belongings and leave. They are promised freedom after years and years of slavery.

With Pharaoh’s army behind them, they come to the sea and there is nowhere to go.

Exodus 14:10 says they were greatly frightened. That’s a polite translation. They were terrified. They turned on Moses: “Was it for want of graves in Egypt that you brought us to die in the wilderness?” This is a very dramatic way of saying: we were miserable back there, but at least it was a familiar miserable.

Moses tells them to stand firm. To witness. To trust. And then the sea parts.

Here is the detail I want you to sit with this Passover.

It would be easy to read the splitting of the sea as simply: the waters parted, empty space was created, a path opened. Get through, reach the other side, done.

But that’s not what the Torah says.

Exodus 14:29: “The waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left.”

The Israelites did not walk through the absence of water.. They walked through presence. Water, held. Boundaries on both sides, holding the path open. The water was not an obstacle for them; it became a container that made the crossing possible.

What appeared to be a block became the very thing that moved them forward. Sometimes the wall in front of you is not there to stop you. Sometimes it’s there to hold the space for you to cross.

When Emotional Walls Hold You Back

Not all walls work this way.

I grew up in a home shaped by divorce and an absent father whose own pain — alcoholism, bitterness, loss — left little of him available for me. I did what most kids do. I built my own walls. Heavy bricks. Keep people at a distance so I would not be hurt.

Those walls protected me for many, many years. Because of them, I kept friends distant, felt little empathy, and focused solely on myself.

I carried those bricks into adulthood, and into love. It took a remarkably patient man, my husband , a man who I just celebrated 33 years of marriage with this week.  He helped me see that the walls had outlived their purpose. Brick by brick, with more grace than I probably deserved, he and my children helped me take them down. There are still times he finds himself doing masonry work, chipping away at the grout. I’m grateful every day.

The walls I needed as a child were real. The walls I was living behind as an adult were costing me everything.

Many of us have walls for valid reasons. Here are three things they block when emotional walls stop being the path and start being the prison:

Connection. You cannot let people in and keep them out at the same time. The Israelites nearly chose Egypt. They almost opted for a life of pain and slavery with familiarity over the unknown, over what community on the other side could look like. Walls that once protected can quietly become the thing keeping you from the comfort and closeness of others.

Possibility. You cannot see what’s coming when you are frozen in place. The promised land is not visible from behind fortified walls. Neither is the next chapter of your life, your relationship, your work, your joy.

Presence. You cannot fully embrace where you are when a wall stands between you and the moment. Walls make us unavailable to the very experiences we’re trying to protect ourselves from. That’s the cruelest irony of the ones we build.

The Question This Passover Asks of Us

The story doesn’t ask you to tear everything down. It asks you to notice.

Notice which walls are holding you. See the boundaries in your life that give your path shape, that make the crossing possible, that keep you grounded as you move forward. Honor them. Check in with them to make sure they are still serving you.

Then notice the walls that are holding you back. The ones that have been up so long you’ve forgotten they’re there. The ones built for a version of your life that no longer exists.

This Passover, at your seder table or in a quiet moment before it, I invite you to ask yourself:

What walls am I bringing to this season of my life? Is this wall holding space for me, or holding me back?

You don’t have to answer out loud. Just let the question in.

That’s how the crossing begins.