When I was younger and Pesach would arrive, I used to find myself drawn towards the spectacle of the plagues, or the splitting of the sea. But in my adult life, I don’t find myself as taken with Moses or Nachshon or the grand stories of the Pesach redemption. I have become way more intrigued and inspired by the quieter stories of the women who ushered in redemption. The midwives Shifra and Pua, who refused to let Jewish babies die. Young Miriam, who followed Moses down the river and then brought him back to his mother. Older Miriam, who led the Israelites across the sea with her Tamborine. And my favorite Pesach story of all, the women under the apple trees.

When we think about the redemption of Pesach, we tend to focus on the loud and miraculous stories—the freeing of slaves, the drama of the Ten Plagues, the hail and fire, and the sea splitting open. But the true redemption happens under the surface, through a series of small but crucial series of choices and actions.

In Jewish mysticism, each month is associated with a Hebrew letter. The Sefer Yetzirah teaches that the letter of Nisan, the month of Pesach, is ה Hei. He writes: 

He made the letter Heh (ה) king over speech
And He bound a crown to it
And He combined one with another
And with them He formed
Aries in the Universe
Nissan in the Year (Sefer Yetzirah Chapter 5:7) 

Hei is not a sharp or forceful letter. It’s an opening sound, a whisper. Hei is the sound of breath leaving the body and the sound of potential, of life beginning.

The mystics teach that Hashem created the world itself through speaking the letter Hei. Not through domination or force, but by making space for something to come into being. Redemption, then, doesn’t arrive with noise. It arrives with breath and space.

This is why Nisan is called the first of months. Redemption begins not with law or structure, but with birth and holy space and breath that birth emanates from. We see this pattern again and again in the Torah. When Avram becomes Avraham and Sarai becomes Sarah, the letter Hei is added to each name and life follows. Sarah conceives. Hei is the moment when divine potential becomes embodied reality.

Even grammatically, Hei signals arrival. A locative Hei added to a place name indicates movement toward, dwelling, presence. The Berditchever Rebbe notices something remarkable: when Yaakov travels to Haran, the Torah doesn’t add a lamed to the beginning, forming l’Haran— to Haran. It says Haranah, with the locative Hei at the end. He explains that this Hei represents the Shechinah. The Berditchever Rebbe writes in Agra Dekala Vayetzei 1: “Why was it not written with a lamed? This is no mere accident. There is an allusion here: the word Haranah (חרנה) has a numerical value (gematria) of 263, hinting that wherever a Jewish person goes in exile, the Shechinah (Divine Presence/Hei) clothes itself in its garments in order to give him life.”

Therefore, Hei is added to a place to show that The Divine Presence is already there, waiting. Before Yaakov arrives, space has already been made for him and the Shechina goes with us in exile.

This is the deeper story of Pesach. Before each of the events that eventually lead Israel out of Egypt, the Shechina is there in exile, ushering in the hidden birth of redemption. Before Pharaoh is defeated. Before the sea splits. Before freedom becomes visible, there is birth. The Shechinah is already present.

These strains of femininity—the births, the Shechina, the tiny miracles of each life—are central to the Israelites being redeemed. The Sages teach that Israel was redeemed in the merit of righteous women. The gemara in Sotah 11b tells us, “Rav Avira taught: In the merit of the righteous women that were in that generation, the Jewish people were redeemed from Egypt.” Therefore, redemption began not with confrontation, but with life itself.

These early strains of life appear not only in the Exodus, but are also echoed in our seder. In Pesachim 116a the rabbis ask why we eat charoset at the seder. It explains, “Rabbi Levi says: in remembrance of the apple, and Rabbi Yochanan says: in remembrance of the mortar.” The second answer is familiar as it represents the mortar of slavery. But Rashi tells us the first answer is “A remembrance of the apple tree—for the Israelite women would give birth to their children there without pain.”

This idea is expanded in Sotah 11b. The gemara tells us that when the men were completely demoralized, it was the women who went out into the fields. They washed their husbands, fed them, and drew them close. And there, in the fields, they conceived. They gave birth under the apple trees—the same apples that we use to make our charoset. According to the rabbis, when danger came, they buried the newborns in the earth, and God sustained them with honey and oil flowing from stone. When the children were old enough, they sprouted like seeds from the ground and ran home.

So charoset, we learn, doesn’t only represent bricks and mortar. It represents the shade of those trees, the fruit of that labor, the life carried quietly beneath the surface before anyone knew liberation was coming. This is Hei-energy: patience and trust in emergence before there are guarantees. The willingness to carry life before the world is ready to receive it.

The story of the women under the apple trees, and the sweetness of the charoset, are not footnotes to the Exodus. They are proof of it. Proof that life was already being nurtured before liberation was realized.

Pesach, then, is not only about leaving Egypt. It is about understanding how redemption enters history at all through breath, through space, through the soft and generative opening of Hei. Through choosing life in the grimmest of conditions, through faith and vision, even when the rest remains uncertain.

And that is what is asked of us, too, in Nisan and on Pesach. No matter the narrow places that might be trapping us, we are invited to lie beneath the apple trees and give birth to something new. To breathe the Hei and trust its life force. To recognize that the Shechinah already dwells with us, even in exile, and to find our way, breath by breath, toward promise.

This Pesach we should all know and live our freedom even before freedom has arrived.