Why Are We Reading About Passover in the Torah Now? It’s Winter! 

Posted on January 28, 2025

By Rabbi Alex Freedman. 

Passover is the springtime holiday, as we all know. That’s actually one of its Hebrew names: Chag HaAviv, literally “The springtime holiday.” So why is this the story we read in the Torah these days, when it is freezing outside? Even in Israel, it’s not springtime yet. 

I want to suggest a technical answer and a thematic answer. 

First, the technical: we complete the full Torah reading start to finish every year. Simchat Torah is both the finish line and the starting line. Given that this holiday always occurs in the fall, and given that we have to fit 54 portions into a 52-week year, this just happens to be the time when we reach the second book of the Torah. In short, it’s pure coincidence. 

But it’s not fair to leave it at that. Whenever we recall the majestic story of Moses and Pharaoh, the march from slavery to freedom, we internalize the core lessons of the story. We dwell deeply upon what freedom means then and now. If we only thought about freedom seriously for one week in the springtime – the week of Passover itself – we would limit its impact and influence. But when we expand the number of weeks that we dedicate to thinking about the morals and consequences of freedom, we multiply the reach of the Passover story. Freedom is too important a tenet to be limited to just one week. It’s so important we should think about it year round… so we do. 

Reading about how G-d is on the side of freedom during the winter is another way to achieve this. But the rabbis who collated the Siddur went even further. For them, the story of Passover was crucial enough to think about every single day. That’s why they intentionally selected readings from Scripture that highlighted the Exodus and included them in daily worship. Shirat Hayam – The Song of the Sea – is one example. The third paragraph of the Shma is another, which crucially ends with recalling the fact that G-d rescued us from Egypt. 

The goal of thinking deeply about Passover year-round is meant to sensitize us year round to the plight of those who are not yet fully free. That’s a 365-day-a-year task.