Timothy Cardinal Dolan on "passing over"

I picked this gem up from Cardinal Dolan's blog, The Gospel in the Digital Age:

Speaking of Passover, which this year runs 6-14 April, I am currently reading Steve Stern's remarkable novel The Frozen Rabbi (and so should you, assuming, of course, that you love Jewish literature, like, say, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Rebecca Goldstein, et al.), which tells a wonderful tale, one that begins in the shtetls of Russia and Ukraine. With regard to passing over, Stern, commenting on the weary road trodden by the displaced Jews from Ukraine as a result of the pogroms of 1906-07, writes that after having their spirits lifted by young enthusiastic Zionists, the weary refugees would again grow weary and begin to drag their feet in what the author describes as "the continuation of a trek that had started in Egypt, then passed through Jerusalem and Sefarad into Eastern Europe, where it took a breather for a millennium - a long, slog during which many fell..."