As we read this near the full moon of Adar, Purim is already happening. This unique holiday is compared to two others. In Hebrew, the phrase "a day like Purim" is—literally—Yom Kipurim. Indeed, we can't separate the two: Fun and seriousness, feasting and fasting, the wearing and the tearing off of masks, are all part of our tradition. One is incomplete without the other.
Likewise Purim's craziness, uninhibited eating and imbibing, and its crossing of boundaries are a counterpoint to another holiday, a month away with the next full moon and next newsletter. The middle of Nisan brings us Pesach, with all its strictures, ordered eating and formal ceremony. With Purim now behind us, what would it look like to spend this coming month truly preparing for Passover?
On the material level, preparation for Pesach is the Jewish version of spring cleaning. It takes the full month to do it right. By the night before Passover, immediately after sundown, Jews traditionally begin the bedikat hametz - the search for leavened bread. The house is now almost completely clean and free of all leavened bread (meaning ever-moistened wheat, barley, oats, spelt and rye; Ashkenazic Jews add rice, millet, corn and legumes). A candle and a feather are used to search the corners of the house for any remaining hametz, with small pieces often planted for children to find. The next morning, any crumbs that were found are burned, so that the house is completely free of hametz.
For many people, the dietary restrictions and prescribed cleaning rituals of Passover seem silly, if not stifling. Yet there is beauty and relevance in the tradition, as we each make our own choices about how to celebrate this festival. Some people sell their hametz in a quasi-legal ritual; others keep it in a taped-up cupboard for the week, out of sight and mind; still others use it as an opportunity to donate what they haven't used. How might each of us find meaning in such a practice?
Getting rid of our hametz, our "leaven," gives us the opportunity to use what we have, rather than just accumulating more. Which products in your kitchen haven't moved since last Pesach?! The package of linguini, the Cheerios, the old can of beans; the bagels from three onegs ago, the leftover stir-fry and, of course, that chocolate cake you ve been saving in the freezer for 'just the right occasion.' This is our chance to simplify, to donate, to clean out our refrigerators as we clean out our minds. (Remembering that even a little bit of hametz works like a poison, contaminating everything with which it comes into contact, we can also use this chance to rid ourselves of the real poisons in our house - replacing toxic cleaners with natural ones, rethinking the need for a perfectly green chem-lawn, treating our used batteries as hazardous waste rather than dumping them in the landfill, and ultimately the Bay . . .)
When the Jews left Egypt, they had to think carefully about
what to take with them. Since the Seder reminds us to think "as if we,
ourselves, went out from Egypt," consider this: What would we carry
with us into the desert? What are the material possesions - food,
clothes, electronic equipment, books, photos, chatchkes - that we
really need? Which truly enhance the quality of our lives, and which
are hametz (leavening or "fluff"), without which we would actually be
better off? With this expanded definition of hametz, let's go beyond
the kitchen and use this time to rid the basement of unused objects . .
. shelves of unread books . . . closets of old clothes. And this
Passover, as we remember the gifts of our freedom and of our relative
fortune, instead of burning our leftover "hametz" we can think about
giving it to those in real need.
Finally, we can rid ourselves
of "hametz" on the psychological level. The hametz of the psyche is the
inflated or leavened ego - those parts of ourselves that prevent us and
others from experiencing our true nature. On Purim alone, we wear masks
that hide our faces. But every day we wear "masks" that hide our true
selves. During this month, perhaps our truest preparation could be
identifying those masks and working on deflating them—so that by
Pesach, we can all taste the freedom of living more fully as our true
selves.
Chag Sameach!
Rabbi Fred Dobb