Thursday, April 21, 2016

Cleaning for Passover: Removing Chametz


imageThose who know me best, often accuse me of being obsessed with tidying up.

Mind you this is largely because I am the one telling them to pick things up.

But I have been enjoying cleaning up for this Pesach (Passover). 

We will be hosting both a first and second night Seder again, but the second night will be somewhat special, as invited the cast from the play I was participating in will be joining us.

Despite the play being put on by the Seattle Jewish Theater Company, half the cast were not Jews, and the Jews mostly had other plans, so it will be for me an ecumenical affair.

But back the to the cleaning.

The idea of cleaning before Pesach is to remove Chametz – leavened items (also to get the gook out of the shelving). 

Anthropologically, this may relate to an older festival of restarting the bread yeast at the turn of the seasons, which was coupled with a lambing holiday.

There is a rabbinical teaching (some older than Corinthians I 5:8), that this makes Pesach a useful time to think of what is metaphorically old and tired dough, and remove it.

Sort of making the holiday (which is also a Jewish New Year) do double duty.

So, between contracts, having finished the play, and I suppose I should give this some thinking* on what I should/need to clean up in my life.

I try and get rid of bad habits, or figure out what do with my life.

There is also garden weeding, the family filing system, and the front gate.

Taking advice from the cats, nap first.




--------
*Queue the dog standing on its hinder legs comments.

0 comments:

Post a Comment