In the spirit of the Internet, here is my
DIY guide to loving Pesach.
DIY LOVING PESACH IN FIVE EASY STEPS!!!
1. Identify the Quarry.
You can't love cleaning for chametz if you
don't know what you're looking for. Call your friendly local halachic authority
and find out what size and quality of chametz need to be out of your
house by Pesach, rather than trying to “catch 'em all” when
the pokemon in question are undefined. Know exactly what you're doing.
2. Put Your Ribbons in Glass Jars If It
Makes You Happy.
Everyone says “Don't spring-clean!” and it's
true that dirt is not chametz, Pesach-cleaning is not spring-cleaning, and the
two should not be confused.
But Pesach-cleaning involves channeling the
spring-cleaning instinct, not repressing it. So I say: start with
spring-cleaning if that's what comes naturally. I started this year by
rearranging ribbons on the sewing-shelf; we got to the kitchen cabinets
eventually but every time I turned around I saw pretty ribbons in chromatic
order and it felt... Pesachdik.
3. Appreciate that Love Is Born in Chaos.
Understand what the month of Adar is about.
Adar leads up to Nisan as Elul leads up to
Tishrei. Pesach will not be all that it can be if you do not go through Adar
first.
Adar is about chaos. Adar is about, I am so
not in control of my life it's funny. Adar is about, Hashem is in control, not
the king and not the vizier. Hashem.
Every Rosh Chodesh Adar something crazy
pushes me into a corner so that I just have to throw my hands in the air and
laugh. Will you will come into our school in ten minutes and extemporize
teaching for four hours? The right answer is, No. But the righter answer
is, Yes, and happy Adar to you, too.
Two weeks later, on Purim, we are so not
on top of the situation that we can't even tell who people are by their
clothes, and a good proportion of our social norms dissolve into one big happy
day of giving food to everyone. If you try to maintain everyday order on Purim
you'll short-circuit. It's a day when creation goes haywire.
Pesach flows naturally from Purim.
But suddenly people try to be in control
again. Then they get frustrated and start wisecracking about how we give each
other food for Purim just one month before all that food has to be cleaned out
of every corner for Pesach.
What do you think, that G-d hates
housekeeping? It's not an accident and it's not sabotage. While yes, you
have to get all that chametz out, the very inefficiency of the arrangement
pushes you to recognize that it's not about efficiency at all. It's not about
having a clean house.
So, if not spring-cleaning, what is Pesach
about?
It's about, Hashem came into Egypt suddenly
to pull us out from nonexistence into existence and claim us as His own. The
theme of the month is ahava, the love between G-d and the Jewish people.
Pesach is the beginning of that relationship.
That relationship was formed in chaos. The
feeling of not being ready is an essential part of Pesach. We threw the dough
in the oven and ran.
No one said, “Wait a minute, G-d. This is
too much chaos. I'd like to stay a slave in Egypt until my dough finishes
rising.”
Lechtech acharai bamidbar be'eretz lo
zarua, you followed me into the wilderness, into a
place where the housekeeping was total chaos. Yeshuas Hashem k'heref ayin, it
happened in the blink of an eye.
On Pesach we love G-d through chaos.
Just relax and enjoy it. You can get to
places on Pesach that you can't get to the rest of the year. Make room for
that.
4. It's All about the Bottomless Supply of
Chocolate.
A member of our community recently raised
the question of how to explain the concept of chametz to her
two-year-old.
My first thought was that before she
switches her kitchen to Pesach mode, she could show the child how yeast
produces bubbles (Loops like to cheer it on - “Eat, yeasties, eat!” - like
Klara drilling Latin), and how those bubbles manifest in the finished loaf, but
not in matzah.
But the truth is that when Loops was two, I
didn't bother trying to explain chametz. It was all about look at these
fancy pretty dishes with blooming irises on them, special for Pesach and here
is your fancy new dress with pretty sparkly buttons, special for Pesach and
here is matzah, special for Pesach. I hide all the things I want to buy
her anyway in the closet for months and then give them to her special for
Pesach.
Adults are big two-year-olds and the same
principle applies.
In practice (says the halacha) this usually
means that men buy meat and wine for themselves, dresses for their wives, and
nuts and sweets for their children.
(My inner two-year-old also likes that the
logo on the kosher-for-Passover seltzer bottles is the heroine from East o'
the Sun and West o' the Moon, which is my favorite fairy tale because it
reminds me of Jewish history: the wife wandering the world with a candle in her
hand looking for her polar bear husband.)
Childish pleasures are a real part of loving
Pesach (thus codified in halacha) and not to be sneezed at.
5. Get a
Handle on the Haggada.
The haggada is totally incomprehensible
until you put in effort to understand it but then it unrolls and it seems
obvious that each paragraph couldn't have been anything else. Apportion some
time before Pesach to learn where it takes us and how.
Here is Rav
Leuchter's explanation. (truffles truffles truffles)
Apart from that, the four cups correspond to
the four stages of the exodus:
1. And I will take you out
2. And I will save you
3. And I will redeem you
4. And I will take you to me to be a nation
This isn't a number game, it's the
progression the seder follows. In the course of the evening we relive the
experience, starting with being slaves in Egypt, and ending with Hallel for
having come out and then Nirtzah. On top of that there is a
custom to stay up and recite the Song of Songs.
At the beginning of the seder we put away
half the bread for later, “just in case”. By the end of the night, there is no
more concern about “just in case”. We take out our reserve and eat it, before
G-d, as a korban.
The seder is not about “each person comes
out of his own personal Egypt” and it isn't necessary to go down that route to
make the seder meaningful. It is about a historical, national experience. You
were there.
To review:
FIVE EASY DIY STEPS TO LOVING PESACH!!
1. Know exactly what you're cleaning for.
2. Start with spring-cleaning if that's what
comes naturally...
3. ...BUT recognize that Pesach is about
ahava, not spring-cleaning.
4. Please your inner two-year-old. This is
halacha.
5. Get up an understanding of where the
seder takes us and how.
Happy Pesaching!
