Seventh Day of Passover 2034

The dates

Shvi'i shel Pesach is the seventh day of Passover, 21 Nisan, and it is not a continuation of the intermediate days but a full festival day in its own right, with its own rest from work, its own kiddush and its own meal.

What it marks is not the exodus itself but what happened a week later: the splitting of the Sea of Reeds. By tradition this was the day the water closed behind the escaping Israelites and an escape turned into a freedom. In Israel it is the day that closes Passover; in the Diaspora an eighth day follows it, Acharon shel Pesach.

The day the sea closed

The Torah sets seven festival days, of which the first and the seventh are days of sacred assembly, days of rest. The days in between are Chol HaMoed. Structurally, then, the seventh day of Passover is the twin of the first, not its tail end.

The link between this day and the sea comes from the arithmetic of the story itself. The Israelites left Egypt on 15 Nisan, were pursued, and reached the water; tradition counts seven days to the moment the sea split and the Egyptian army drowned in it. So the seventh day is not simply one more festival day. It marks a separate event: the one that made the exodus irreversible.

Outside Israel the picture is slightly different. There a second day is added to each festival day, a practice that began when the start of the month was announced by beacon and messenger and distant communities could not be certain of the date in time. Once the calendar was fixed by calculation the obvious question arose, and the answer sent from the Land of Israel was: "Be careful to keep the custom of your ancestors in your hands" ¹. That is where the eighth day comes from: Acharon shel Pesach, which has no biblical subject of its own, and which some communities filled with content of their own making.

"The seventh day shall be a sacred occasion"

The source for the day itself is short and plain: "Seven days you shall make offerings by fire to GOD. The seventh day shall be a sacred occasion: you shall not work at your occupations" ². The Torah does not say why the seventh in particular, and does not explicitly tie it to the sea; that connection comes from the sequence of events in Exodus and from the tradition that read the two together.

The text most closely identified with the day is the Song of the Sea, read in synagogue that morning. It opens: "Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to GOD. They said: I will sing to GOD, who has triumphed gloriously; Horse and driver have been hurled into the sea" ³. It is one of the oldest passages in the Bible, and in a Torah scroll it is written in an unusual layout, short lines with gaps between them, set like brickwork, which on the parchment looks very much like water that has been parted.

What the day looks like

Reading the Song of the Sea. The Torah reading that morning is the crossing of the sea, and congregations customarily stand for the song itself. Many communities chant it to a melody used on no other day of the year.

A night of singing. Some stay awake through the night of the seventh day and say the song at first light, roughly the hour at which, in the story, the sea opened.

Water. In many Moroccan and North African communities, and in a number of Hasidic courts, people pour water, or walk out to the sea or a river on this day and sing there. It is one of the most physical and joyful customs in the Jewish year, and almost unknown outside the communities that keep it.

Yizkor. The memorial prayer is said on the last day of the festival: in Israel on the seventh day, in the Diaspora on the eighth.

The eighth day. On Acharon shel Pesach, Chabad Hasidim hold a “Seudat Mashiach” towards its close, a fourth meal with matzah and four cups, established as a custom some two hundred years ago. In Israel, where there is no eighth day, it is held on the seventh.

And straight afterwards. When the festival goes out, Passover is over: leaven returns, and across Israel the Mimouna celebrations begin that same evening.

The first one into the water

The Talmud says that at the decisive moment, the sea not yet open, the Egyptians already behind them, no tribe wanted to be first in. They stood on the shore arguing about who should go, until one man settled it without saying anything: "Nachshon ben Amminadav jumped and went down into the sea first" ⁴.

That is Nachshon's entire role in the Talmud, and it was enough to put his name into modern Hebrew as a common word: “nachshoni” describes someone who jumps first. In this telling the miracle did not come before the courage. It came after it.

The story has a less familiar companion. The Talmud also relates that as the Egyptians were drowning, the ministering angels wanted to sing. "The Holy One said to them: The work of my hands is drowning in the sea, and you are singing?" ⁵. The Israelites sang; they had been there, they had been saved. The angels, who had only watched from above, were told to be quiet.

Joy that knows to lower its voice

There is a small detail in the prayers of this day that most people notice only once it is pointed out: the Hallel of the closing days of Passover is shorter than the Hallel of the first day. On the first day the full text is said; from then on part of it is skipped.

The reason usually given is precisely that story about the angels. Even on the day that marks the greatest rescue in the narrative, the rescue had a price, and it cannot be sung about at full volume. That makes it a rare moment in the Jewish calendar: a festival that is loudly happy, and that nonetheless built itself a small mechanism of restraint on exactly the day it had the best case for celebrating.

There is something in the shape of the festival here too. Passover opens with the Seder, an evening about what happened, and closes with a day about what became possible because of it. Everything else sits between those two ends.

Common questions about the seventh day of Passover

When does Passover end?

In Israel it ends at nightfall on the seventh day, 21 Nisan. In the Diaspora an eighth day follows, 22 Nisan, and the festival ends at nightfall on that day. This year it falls on 10/4/34.

When is the seventh day of Passover?

On 21 Nisan, six days after Seder night. On the civil calendar it falls between late March and late April depending on the year.

What is the difference between Shvi'i shel Pesach and Acharon shel Pesach?

Shvi'i shel Pesach is 21 Nisan and marks the splitting of the sea. Acharon shel Pesach is 22 Nisan, kept in the Diaspora only, and comes from the second festival day observed outside Israel. In Israel the seventh day is also the last day, so both names point to the same day there.

Is the seventh day of Passover a full festival day?

Yes. It is a yom tov, not an intermediate day, a public holiday in Israel, exactly like the first day of the festival.

How long does it last?

One day, from sunset the evening before until nightfall the following day. In the Diaspora the eighth day begins immediately afterwards.

When Passover is over: the closing day on the calendar

The table at the top of this page shows exactly how the festival closes: the Hebrew date of the seventh day, the matching civil date and the weekday, for the selected year and the years after it. In Israel, Passover is over when this day goes out. In the Diaspora it ends a day later, on Acharon shel Pesach.

Every date is computed from the Hebrew calendar as the page loads, so it holds for any year, including the years when the festival runs across two civil months.

• Every festival of the year in one view: the annual holidays calendar
• The full printable calendar: home page
• The festival as a whole, from Seder night on: Passover

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