"Spring Means Saying Yes to Life": Noa Yaron Dayan's Inspiring Post on Renewal for Passover

Noa Yaron Dayan published a captivating and 'spring-like' post on her Facebook page this week, where she discusses the renewal characteristic of the season and how it impacts us internally.

"Spring is an elusive season," she begins to write. "A transitional season. The name always amuses me. What is a transitional season? A season without independent existence. A transition. From here to there. Like a corridor between winter and summer. The more I think about it, spring truly is a corridor. A birth canal. In nature, everything blooms and turns from gray to green, and spiritually, it's a metaphor for all awakening and rebirth. Spring was also our corridor from slavery to freedom during the Exodus. It was and still is.

"Every year, all of creation is set free in the spring, and so are we. From captivity to redemption. From slumber to awakening. From freezing sources to thawing warmth. And above all, from having no choice to having choice. So, a transitional season, it might be, but it's not just a transition. This transition is the beginning of everything. This transition proves that we are still alive. Another winter has ended but did not end us. Tomorrow's fruit is already starting to bloom within us, urging us to warm up in the morning sun. It's just a bud, but it has already broken through the cold, wet bark. It's here. It was just born now. In the spring. In the corridor.

Rabbi Nachman commanded his students to constantly seek out the spring. To seek the beginnings, the new, the budding, the emerging, and to renew themselves ceaselessly. Because the Exodus happens to each person at all times. We are redeemed at every moment if we just choose. The spring corridor is narrow, and in it, you are reborn, after having died in the exile of yourself a thousand times already, and emerge from slavery to freedom. This corridor should be a place you know well.

As Rabbi Nachman of Breslov's students reported:

"He was accustomed to always start anew. That is, when he fell from his level at times, he would not despair for this, rather he said he would begin anew as if he hadn't started at all...just now, he begins anew. And so each time and again he was accustomed to start anew, having several new beginnings in one day alone, as even in one day at times he fell from his service and began anew, and thus a few times in one day. Thereafter, he began again anew, forgetting all the past as if he had never started at all, and returned and began anew.

And he would say, that it is good for a man to say... today I am beginning... and make a new beginning each time, for all the continuations follow after the beginnings."

The new start, according to Rabbi Nachman, is the essence. It doesn't matter what you went through, how many times you fell, or how far, the main thing is to start from the beginning each and every time. Do not sink into the slumber of winter. Rise and shake off. Do not fear to step out, to bloom, to grow, to fall, or to rise again each time as if you've never started yet... like a baby starting anew. With no past. Without a future. Just with the present, becoming every moment. Because spring is a state of mind. Spring is an agenda. Spring means saying yes to life. Spring is a giant spectrum of colors, smells, and feelings, all of flourishing renewal and change. In short, spring is tailor-made for me...

Happy birthday, our Rabbi. May you give me a gift for your birthday as you said you would. Maybe some renewal wrapped in a pink ribbon," she concludes.