My husband's Jerusalem employer recently transferred us to Sydney, Australia where we arrived in late November— just in time for summer. While the notion of an endless supply of oxygen-rich ocean air and summer fun seemed intriguing, it is out of sync with my psyche. The calendar read December and my internal preset winter clock wanted chicken soup, but the world around me demurely sipped iced fruit shakes at outdoor cafe tables crowned with sun umbrellas.

I anticipated a familiar Hanukkah during which I would carefully and lovingly welcome the warm glow of candlelight into my home as an antidote to the protracted darkness of winter. Instead, daylight meandered and lingered, and I lit my menorah after eight in the evening.To confuse matters even more, the summer solstice fell shortly on December 21.

In my familiar Northern hemisphere, early April heralded the spontaneous eruption of crocuses and daffodils. In the fall, Sukkot often tested our fortitude to brave cold, damp weather in our humble dwellings and Passover was always the springtime festival.The holidays are in gorgeous harmony with Biblical expectations. Now I am in a place which is not only seasonally dissonant with my home turf, but which also clashes with the traditions and customs inextricably linked to our Jewish celebrations.

However, by now I have withstood the shock of Hanukkah and experienced the fruits of Tu B'Shevat, the Festival of Trees that occurs during the Israeli spring in January. Now, I tried to ready myself for a Passover in winter. I had to prepare my home and my heart for liberation in the season of hibernation; for release in time of retraction; for moving out when the season is imploring me to move in. For me, our national and spiritual redemption find such profound expression in the symbolism of spring's rebirth, that to wrench the physical signs of our redemption from our psyches renders the process of that experience as tentative.

And then I remember my grandfather.

My grandparents came to America from Russia,where the early April sun barely cracks the ice. From them I inherited the potato as the green vegetable for my Seder plate because there was no green. Their seasonal redemption did not coincide with the Biblical directive either. Yet, I imagine that the Russian frost did not chill my grandfather's rendition of the story of our people's liberation.Whatever temperature the thermometer recorded, whatever winter storm may have barreled across the Russian Pale, the calendar still read Nisan, the month in which Passover occurs and Passover still happened. Our redemption would not be postponed due to weather, or season, or location.

And so it is here, in Australia. I asked the Rabbi in my Sydney community whether the Passover service is modified to accommodate the holiday's winter appearance. No, she replied, the service remains the same.

How remarkably comforting that was to me. Irrespective of place, our history and our calendar are constant.We are one voice chanting the story of our Exodus from Egypt. Some of us may be on the threshold of spring while others are checking the insulation of our windows. But we are all standing together at the bank of Red Sea waiting for the waters to part, waiting to cross, anticipating our freedom.

Recounting the story of our past redemption in all its luscious and colorful detail can only carry us forward towards rebirth, towards spring, towards our future redemption. Perhaps this year instead of taking the expansiveness and richness of spring for granted as the pleasant seasonal accompaniment to Passover, I will have to define spring. Perhaps this year I will have to truly imagine that I was physically redeemed from the historical winter that was Egypt.

May all of us experience the redemption of Passover wherever we are in the world—the way I will in Sydney when spring comes in winter.