A Wall Street Journal article several years back (around 2003) discussed the results of a fascinating study on stress. The study indicated that people who work under severe stress often take time off to relax and "decompress."


Alas, it turns out that this cycle of intense stress followed by complete relaxation does nothing to alleviate the

The Seder and holiday challenges us to leave whichever "Egypt" our souls languish in.

deleterious physical and mental health effects of chronic stress. The only thing that really helps is responding in effective ways to stress-inducing situations as they arise.


Stress is not healed by relaxation; rather, it is living day to day in a completely different manner that improves our lives.


Passover celebrates not just past freedom, but it is a celebration of our capacity to attain freedom in "every generation," as the Haggadah puts it. The Seder and holiday challenges us to leave whichever "Egypt" our souls languish in. The Hebrew word for Egypt is Mitzrayim, which means "constriction and limits."


However, when we think of freedom, we often perceive it as being free of care, worry and the burdens of life – "relaxation".


The very preparations for Passover contradict this image with its emphasis on banishing every crumb of leaven from each nook and cranny, with the need to eat precise amounts of matzah and drink a certain measure of wine with each cup. After all, without eating and drinking the correct amounts, we have not really celebrated the Seder.


Can such a focus on detail bespeak freedom? Yes.


Freedom must happen within the context of the world we live in, just as a relaxed person manages stress by the way he or she lives in the midst of the stress-inducing environment.


We are physical beings living in a world of myriad details and minutia. If we say, "I can only spread my wings and feel uplifted when I transcend the body, the Earth and all its petty details," then we are saying that G-d cannot be felt here in our world; we have to leave the world to be elevated.


In this model, both of us are in Mitzrayim: G-d is imprisoned in the sublime and we are imprisoned in the petty.


Passover responds by telling us that just as stress is not solved by escaping our life-frameworks, but by remaining within them and transforming them from within, so too, our inner lives. If we truly want our spirits to soar 24/7 in the world we live in, then we must find G-d in the details of our lives, on our terms.


As we chew upon precisely the right measure of matzah, the ordinary act of eating now reflects the will of the infinite, packaged in a few mouthfuls.


G-d is so great that G-d can be present in the smallest entity and the shortest

G-d is so great that G-d can be present in the smallest entity and the shortest moment.

moment. G-d is not imprisoned in the infinite and we are not jailed in the finitude of this world. G-d can be wherever G-d chooses to be, even in piece of matzah, a glass of wine and the Four Questions in the mouth of a small child.


We can find the transcendent in the stuff of everyday life, if we only seek it out.


Passover begins with the search for chametz - leaven - in all the nooks and crannies of our homes and our beings. Leaven is puffed up with gases of decomposition. It takes up more space than the pristine dough does. There are all kinds of things in our lives that "puff up" and obscure our ability to envision our true potential.


Once we remove all the puffery and noise from our lives, we can ask ourselves who we really are. What we search for and find is our capacity to find G-d in the ordinary. This ability to find the "Divine in the details" frees all of our lives from ever being "ordinary."


True freedom does not need to escape the everyday, because every detail of every day, hour and moment of our lives as Jews liberates us.