Reflections Spring 2026
| by Danielle Stillman
It’s mud season again in Vermont and the rain has begun. As I write this reflection, our country and the world seem to be in a muddy place as well, with war, a huge escalation in antisemitism, and quite a bit of domestic unrest.
In the Buddhist tradition, the lotus is a metaphor for enlightenment—the beautiful flower that grows out of the mud and muck of samsara, which is the cycle of suffering and ignorance in which we live our daily lives. In our Jewish tradition at this time of year, we align with the flowers of spring that will soon push through the mud, and we celebrate the Israelite people, our ancestors, who left behind the narrowness of slavery to burst through the Sea of Reeds into the expansiveness of freedom.
We cannot always see what will emerge from the mud because it obscures and blocks our vision. It is heavy, and anyone who has driven a car in Vermont during mud season knows that if you’re not careful, you can get stuck in it. Passover is an exercise in seeing past that heaviness and “stuckness.” In the seder we reenact the bravery and faith of the Israelites stepping into and crossing the Sea of Reeds—not knowing if the water will engulf them as they go, not knowing what they will find on the other side. We are reminding ourselves that freedom requires imagination—we must dream and then step into that which we can envision but have not yet seen.
Here on campus, we are resourcing that dreaming by building community and building knowledge. We just returned from a magical Shabbat overnight at Williams College—they hosted Middlebury students to pray and eat and learn and socialize with the Jewish students there, inspiring us with all kinds of new energy and ideas about what is possible here at Middlebury. Our own Shabbat services and dinners have been delightfully full this whole year, and students are learning to lead prayer, discussing Torah, taking Jewish studies classes, and finding ways to work toward repairing the world. In this issue you will read about Professor Adi Livny’s history class that uncovered the stories of Jews at Middlebury and in Vermont, and you will accompany Shayah Kosak ’27 on an adventure to find the right Jewish community to celebrate Sukkot with during his study abroad in Chile in the fall.
May Passover bring us each the faith, imagination, and clarity to dream of freedom and expansiveness, even in the midst of what obscures it. May we dream that freedom into being, for us and for all people.
Happy Passover!