Every Pesach, I seek something new: a new insight, a nice drash, a textual interpretation. After all, every festival has its own spiritual energy—a deep and vast cavern of wisdom and guidance available tot hose who seek it. But, it was the day before Passover, and I was having trouble finding my Passover wisdom. At 12:00 noon, I led a mediation workshop at Rothko Chapel, addressing the nature of the soul in Jewish tradition. I claimed that our souls are pure and that they get damaged by separation and disappointment as we journey through life. We can restore the purity of the soul through prayer, meditation, study, and ethical refinement. After the class, a fellow seeker approached me with a question: Where was the concept of fear in all this? In her experience, the largest spiritual and emotional block to global and inner peace was fear! Where does fear factor into Jewish spiritual tradition, she asked.

While standing on one foot, I answered that the soul has no fear. The body and the mind have fear, but the Torah instructs us repeatedly to fear only God, but to have no fear of mortals, to have no far of battle, to have no fear of change and growth. I thanked her for the new insight that the soul has no fear. I thanked her because I had arrived at the end of my Pesach wisdom journey. A Jewish perspective on fear: have none of it. I was content with my Passover wisdom . . . temporarily.

As I was presenting my newfound revelation on the Shabbat morning of Passover, in the midst of a discussion on many biblical sources of our ancient mandate to fear no thing and no human, to fear only God, Marga Rappaport, a wonderful woman and a Holocaust survivor who list her family in the Shoah, raised her hand. She rose to add an insight based on her experience: Sometimes there are good reasons to fear humans.

My search for Passover wisdom continued. Looking back, I realize I couldn’t have been as simple as “have no fear.”

How are we to bridge the chasm between our own pampered experience and the experience or our grandparents and great-grandparents who experienced the fear of concentration camps, of ghettos, and of slavery? We know intellectually to appreciate our gratitude. We understand the imperative to express our appreciation through social action and acts of loving-kindness. What do we really know about fear?

That’s the charge of the Passover Seder, and that’s the end of this year’s Passover journey to wisdom. At the Seder, we need to find a way to taste the bitterness of slavery in the maror—for real. We need to find a way to taste the exultation of freedom in the wine—for real.

Who is wise? One who learns from every person. Stay tuned to those who cross your path. I conclude with a quote from The Princess Diaries that I heard while sitting on the couch with my kids: “Courage is not the absence of fear but rather the judgment that something is more important than fear.” Let us appreciate our freedom. Let us learn from past generations and future generations of our people.