Rabbi Toba's Shabbat Thoughts

This Shabbat is called Shabbat Hagadol, “the great Shabbat,” most likely in honor of the special haftarah, a selection from the prophet Malachi that warns of a “great day” coming, an era of justice and healing. More colloquially, it took on this name because the rabbi would give a really long sermon about keeping the rules of Passover kashrut!
 
While I won’t be haranguing  anyone about their kashrut observance, I do appreciate the process of preparing for Passover.  Along with the seder, the other signature experience of this holiday is the removal of hametz, an instruction that we find in the earliest references to Passover in the Torah.  What is hametz?  One definition might be, "anything made from grain that isn't matzah."  Traditionally, we clear all traces of barley, wheat, spelt, rye and oats out of our houses and out of our diet for the week of Passover (unless they have been made into matzah).  In Ashkenazi tradition, a whole slew of other things got added to that list (referred to as "kitniot"):  beans, rice, corn, and products made from those things.  The Sephardic tradition is that it's acceptable to eat kitniot on Passover, and many Ashkenazi Jews (like myself) take on Sephardic practice when it comes to Passover!

There are many ways to observe the mitzvah of removal of hametz, and whether or not it's your practice to do this "clearing out" over Passover, I wanted to share some more expanded ways to think about this practice, and what it might bring to your Passover observance.

Passover is ultimately about freedom and new beginnings. The exodus from Egypt is a birth story - the birth of the Israelite people, and of a new kind of society, covenanted in love and justice.  Passover is also a spring holiday, celebrating the first harvest and the new birth of the flocks. So part of the practice of clearing out hametz is linked to this sense of beginning, of new possibilities - clearing out the old, to make room for the new.

In many Hasidic interpretations, hametz represents internal obstacles and negativity, and we take this week of Passover to clear out as much of this as we can.  So one possible focus is an intentional "clearing out" of those internal tendencies - selfishness; greed; excessive pride; negativity towards self or others - that are getting in the way of our own liberation. I have found that when I set an inner intention - to be more generous, less judgmental, more patient - it is helpful to have some external action to reinforce the inner intention.  A thorough cleaning of my kitchen, and the removal of many of the products that I rely on for the rest of the year, is a very interesting corollary to the internal work I seek to do at this time. What is it that I find enslaving, within my own mind? What habits, tendencies, defenses, are obstructing my own freedom? 

Once I have identified these, I begin my cleaning process, and as I do so, I pause every 10 or 15 minutes and say, "lich'vod Pesach," "in honor of Passover."  It's as if the scrubbing and cleaning I'm doing with my body helps anchor what I'm trying to do within my neshamah, my soul.  So whether you do a traditional clearing out of hametz or just remove some of the more obvious bread products from your kitchen, you may want to experiment with this internal-external practice this week.

Another type of hametz is the non-food kind - those things that clutter our lives and our minds, like old emails in the inbox, or stacks of paper on the desk.  The Passover week is a great time to do some of this de-cluttering, again with the intention to create space in our lives and our homes or places of work for new things to emerge.   You may want to choose one such de-cluttering task and declare it your "hametz" for this year, and set out to remove as much as you can, either before Passover begins, or over the course of the week. 

Finally, it is traditional to do bedikat hametz, a search for hametz, the night before erev Passover (this year, that's Sunday evening).  We search the house for remaining traces of hametz, collect what's left, and then burn it Monday morning.  This final removal is called bi'ur hametz, the "nullification of hametz," and this formula is traditionally recited right before the hametz is burned:

May all leaven (hametz) and leavened products that exist in my property that I have seen and have not seen, that I have destroyed and have not destroyed, be considered nullified and ownerless, like the dust of the earth.
 
I am also aware that this year, Pesach arrives at a deeply unsettling time.  With no clear view of what the coming days hold, I know that many of us are concerned for the safety of loved ones in Israel.  The threat of a regional war hovers, even as the profound suffering within Gaza and the ongoing agony of the families of the hostages continues.  For those who might like to take a small action, the Israeli grassroots group Standing Together is collecting signatures to signal opposition to an escalation of the current conflict with Iran — you can see it here.  As we enter into this Shabbat, may our prayers for a cessation of violence, for the wellbeing of everyone in the region, be heard. And as we prepare for Passover, may we be strengthened in our efforts to clear out all that limits our true freedom, and may all people the world over taste the possibility of liberation from suffering.