So it's that time again, to widen the narrow places and let our waters flow free to the sea. Not just the places you always think need widening, but the narrow places you're about to discover. Clear a passage through both your Egypts. Undam it all.

After all, isn't that what these holy days are about? Judgment? The judgment language is everywhere in the liturgy. We are asked to look inside and take stock, in a process called cheshbon hanefesh - the accounting of the soul. It's hard and it doesn't always feel good. In fact, I had one friend tell me that she wouldn't be attending Yom Kippur at her synagogue this year because she's tired of being asked to feel bad.

I began to see the words, the Hebrew typeface we call block print, as actual bricks, walling me off and keeping me out. I felt myself fuming. I felt tears welling up. But as I stared at this wall, my mind wandered to the Greek myth of Pyramus and Thisbe. Next door neighbors, lovers from feuding families. A chink in the wall was how they saw and heard each other, and how they carried on their love affair.

"Passover" is not only the name of our Festival of Matzot and our description of the Angel of Death's detour when approaching an Israelite home in Egypt. It is also a knitting instruction. Abbreviated passo, It involves several minute actions. You make a stitch. You follow this with another stitch. Then you reach back and grab the earlier one. You pass it over and around the more recent stitch, pull it off the needle and let it go. Then you keep knitting.