Passover Prep

By Talia Davis So let's start from the top and clean our way down... Getting Rid of Chometz We must fulfill the mitzvah of biur chometz -- getting rid of chometz. This isn't as hard as you are thinking... The Torah tells us: " tashbisu se'or mibateichem " -- make all your sour dough rest. So the commandment is that you can have chometz in your presence, but you must believe it is without an owner or value. Because this idea is fairly vague, our Sages decided to require us to physically destroy chometz. This mitzvah is known as bedikat chometz. They tell us it is not enough to emotionally dismiss the chometz because we still crave it. Therefore we must actively seek out any chometz and truly destroy it. To truly fulfill the mitzvah of bedikat chometz , we should do the search on the night of the 14th of Nissan, which is the evening prior to the first Seder. Now this seems silly -- if we are looking for crumbs, why do it at night? Well, to see in the crevices and corners well, particularly at night, we need to use candles or flashlights. Why on this specific night? Well, this process is a communal process. If we all do it on the 14 of Nissan, we all are doing it together, across the world. As our homesteads have grown larger and larger, the job of bedikat chometz has grown bigger and bigger. We would be up all night if we did our pesach cleaning on one night. So, the tradition has developed to collect and clean our homes prior to the 14 th and do a symbolic bedikat chometz that evening with bags of chometz to be found by children. Let's talk about some rules about bedikat chometz. Day and Night Cleaning One rule is that anything that is movable or visible in natural light can be cleaned during the day as long as you have sufficient daylight. However, anything like cabinets or closets that can't be seen in the natural light must be inspected and cleaned at night. The only time that you can't compete the mitzvah is at twilight... it is not light enough to see and not dark enough to use artificial light. You can clean at twilight but you must inspect it again in the dark or daylight to be sure you captured everything! What Is Chometz Anyway? The Torah says: Lo yera'eh lecha chometz, velo year'eh lecha se'or bechol gevulecha -- "neither chometz nor se'or shall be visible to you in all your boundaries." Chometz = any result of a grain that has fermented and is edible by humans. Se'or = sourdough that is highly fermented and can ferment other dough and inedible fermented grain. We have to get rid of both of these items and anything made from either of these. Additionally, there is one more segment, the inedible chometz that cannot ferment other dough. There is a very serious halachic term for this... garbage. And since it is garbage, we don't have to get rid of it. Here's where it gets a little tricky. What about crumbs? Now, if you drop crumbs on your floor, would you eat them? No! That's gross and therefore, it's halachic garbage. Now, if you drop crumbs on the table, would you eat them? Even if it is a delicious cake? You wouldn't stick your finger in them and lick it off? Aha! Gotcha! That makes it chometz. Beauty Products Didn't think this would come up in this conversation, did you? Well this isn't common outside of the Orthodox movement, but there was a lot of conversation about this because many items can contain grain products in them. However, you don't eat it so it isn't chometz and you can't use it to ferment dough so it isn't se'or. Well, this got complicated, and many years ago a very smart rabbi named Rabbi Moshe Feinstein came up with an idea on how to deal with this. He stated that even if something isn't currently edible, if it could be distilled and made into something edible, it is chometz. What?! Yup. Anything with ethyl alcohol (grain alcohol) can be considered chometz. Now, I can't imagine that anyone would drink aftershave, but if you tried and succeeded in distilling it, it would be drinkable (gross but drinkable, poisonous but drinkable). This means that anything liquid with grain alcohol must be a part of the chometz cleaning. Please note that I said liquids. Any solids like soap can't be distilled or eaten and you don't have to worry about it for Passover. I know some of this sounds a bit extreme but just remember that we are showing you the whole picture. Don't throw away your perfume... Eating Chometz So now we have cleaned our house and checked our beauty supplies. What about cooking? Our rabbis have said that if you even intentionally eat one tiny bit of chometz on Passover, you have broken the laws of Passover. Many people will own a second set of dishes, pots, pans, silverware, glasses, even spices to ensure that not one speck of chometz enters their Pesach cooking. In fact, some (very large) homes will even have a separate Pesach kitchen! For those of us who can't afford that, we just place a special plastic board over our cooking surfaces or aluminum foil to ensure that not even a spec of chometz touches the food. Household Goods There are a lot of places that chometz hides. Many people strive to clean all those places to ensure the house is clean. Some Jews will do a large load of laundry before Pesach to ensure that there is not chometz on them. And the sheets... oh the sheets. I just love having breakfast in bed, don't you? Well, there might be some crumbs there... gotta wash those sheets nice and fresh for the holiday! I know parents who find peanut butter on toys and half-eaten sandwiches in the playroom... don't forget to clean those toys or decide what would be "Kosher for Passover" to play with and keep the other ones off limits. One thing that I always find funny is when I crack open the Haggadah (the book we use on Pesach) and find year (or many year) old matzah hiding in the pages. The key here is to make sure chometz from books doesn't end up on the Passover table and to bang out each book upside down before you read it to be sure it is clean. Part of the cleaning process is cleaning the nooks and crannies. We pull up the couch cushions and vacuum the cracks. A good vacuum in all the corners and a wipe down of the non-cloth chairs as well as the counters and cabinets is key. Wipe down your doorknobs and your cabinet handles as well as the fridge handle. You can wipe down the fridge shelves or pull them out and put them in a bathtub of ammonia water. One easily overlooked spot is the rubber seal on the fridge door. A wipe down with a cotton swab dipped in ammonia water is called for here. Now, the oven... this is an easy one (if you have a self-cleaning cycle). Just run the self-cleaning cycle and you are good to go. Look and see if there is anything rubber in there. If there is, just place some foil around it. As for the range, to kosher it for Passover, you must lay some foil down. And many people think the vent above the stove is a breeding ground for chometz mixing! So some refrain from using it. The microwave is a fun one. Put a bowl of water in there and turn it on for 30 minutes or so... let it steam the inside of your microwave and wipe it down. That sounds like everything... except for the kitchen sink! If you have a stainless steel sink, you can douse it in boiling water and then pour some strong drain cleaner on the drain of the sink to clean the top of the drain as well as the pipes themselves. If you have a porcelain sink, it can't be koshered. It is too porous. They do sell plastic sink inserts though! Don't forget to clean your faucet and handles too! Don't forget to mop your floor with ammonia and empty your vacuum bag (chometz breeding ground, I tell you)! But I Just Bought That Loaf of Bread It happens every year. Two, three, five, eight days before Pesach you are at the grocery store and those Oreos look good... and so does that French baguette... what about that 2 liter of soda? I know that I certainly would not throw away food and food banks won't take open boxes (with good reason)... so what do you do with chometz that you can't/won't get rid of? It is a simple and brilliant solution. Sell it. Now, I am not saying that you need to have a yard sale for half-eaten food. Let me explain. Take all that chometz... cookies, crackers, bread, anything not marked Kosher for Passover, and put them away in a special cabinet. Seal it off (in my house we use masking tape) and sell it to your (non-Jewish) neighbor. Some Chabad houses will have a form you can fill out allowing the rabbi to sell your chometz on your behalf or just type up one on your own. Come on, it's fun! Your friends can own a cabinet in your house for a week. Just type up a simple sheet of paper that says you are selling the chometz to whom for how much and how long. The chometz is generally sold for a token amount, like one dollar. At the end of Pesach, it is purchased back by you for the same price. Some groups believe that you shouldn't sell edible chometz, but that isn't always feasible. It's a very good alternative to flushing it down the proverbial toilet. During the week of Pesach in Israel, the chief rabbi sells all of the chometz in Israel to an Arab leader. Kind of a cool idea, huh? Here's a link to further information on selling chometz. Or you can sell your chometz online here. Now you are ready for Passover! Have more questions? Post them here and we will answer! Talia Davis is the daughter, granddaughter, and great-grandaughter of rabbis. She directs the Jewish Portal at Patheos and manages the site's online community.