Alright, halfway done. There, I said it. I know there is about a week till Pesach- but B"H- well on schedule, even with NBD being extremely cute and charming. What can I do? I have to stop and play with her sometimes, I just have to.
So, I decided to play devil's advocate with myself. Why am I cleaning so much?
What makes me decide to Pesach clean every book in the house even though we probably won't read more than 2 of them over Yom Tov?
What causes me to reorganize closets, and shuffle drawers?
I mean, if it was up to a guy- they would say- well, it has to be more than a kezayis, and it has to be edible by a dog, and if it is less than a kezayis we only worry about it if it comes to the table...so.....there, I'm finished, in less than a day.
It seems that Pesach has become a time for me, as well as other women and girls, to obsessively clean, far more than necessary.
I must have hit the roof when I heard, "Well, you could actually use a soup that you cooked before Pesach with your chametz pots on Pesach. Because the little chametz on your pot is batel before Pesach."
I always thought that my countertop had to be left for 24 hours, kashered 3 times with boiling water, and then covered. Now I hear, "Well, if you're going to cover it after all that, then what's
the point?"
So why in heaven's name did Jewish women throughout history obsessively clean?
I think it stems from an old story. There was this Rav, who asked his wife why she was scrubbing the walls and the floors. After all, we don't really eat on our walls, so the possibility of there being more than a kezayis of chametz on the walls is almost nil.
She answered, "If the cleaning was left up to you, we'd have chametz in our house on Pesach."
We clean because we know, that if we clean far more than necessary, the chance of there being chametz in our houses goes down to nil. If we just cleaned what's needed, the risk of finding that pretzel during bedikas chametz, or not finding it at all, goes up astronomically.
So, we clean. We clean and clean, we spring clean and regular clean and Mr. Clean all in one.
So pass me the bleach, okay? Thanks.
EDIT: How do y'all like the new look? Comment please!
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15 hours ago
13 comments:
NMF#7:
Good post - but wait for next year when NBD is old enough to hide the pretzels, Cheerios etc: that just adds to the 'entertainment'!
Our little tinok hides his Cheerios wherever he can...
Chag kasher v'sameach
Anon613-London
Anon613- Looking forward :-D.
I'm telling you, I saw my neighbor's kid climb up purposefully to the top of the closet to eat. Sheesh, what munchkins can do.
Love your club badge! ;)
Like I said in my post last night, I think spring cleaning for pesach is great. :-D
SD- Spring cleaning is excellent, but I haven't found 14 dollars worth of change. More like 4 shekels or so. Oh, and a pretzel. Yippee!!
Interestingly, my captcha says 'credcon'. Does that mean all credit cards are a con? Could be!
less than a kizais is a problem even until you dont have crumbs is a problem. We only say that you dont have to clean some books because we arent makpid on the crumbs and we make bitul. And the soup is really assur, there is no bitul b'rov or b'shishim when it comes to chametz.
Mike- why is less than a kezayis a problem? Illuminate me please.
Oh, and the soup seems not to be a problem, because chametz is batel before Pesach, but not on it. There is no batel b'rov/shishim when it comes to Chametz on Pesach, but if it was cooked in a Chametz pot, with no Chametz in it, it should be batel. I'll get sources as soon as I can though.
Oh, Mike- if you believe that there is no batel- how can our tap water be Kosher L'Pesach?
After all, someone could pour a bottle of beer into the water supply- or into the Kinneret- and then we would all be drinking chametz (since not all of it gets filtered)?
It's an interesting question that was posed to me. I have an answer- but I'd like to hear what people come up with.
Okay, I've got something from Aish.com....
http://www.aish.com/passlaw/passlawdefault/passover_cleaning_made_easy.asp
New look - a bit of getting used to, but not bad at all. Middle column (content) is a bit thin, so might be worth shifting out the borders slightly and making the sidebars (especially the left one) a bit thinner.
Note, however, that I use a tiny screen. It might be a lot bigger for most people if it expands to fit (as mine is supposed to).
Beyond that, though, it's really nice. Clean look, easy to read, good formatting... I like it.
Ezzie- I'm still learning html- this took me quite a while. How do I shift the sidebars around? I wanted to do it- but blogger wouldn't let me.
Depends on your template. You should see a section "Layout" - it has the width of each section in it. ___px usually. I actually changed mine to percentages so it can resize to fit any screen. (You can view the HTML of mine by right-clicking and viewing page source.)
Whatever you do, save it first. I did mine via trial and error.
If you want, feel free to e-mail me. Hard to show HTML in comments, especially when it automatically takes them.
NMF- I must be a guy in disguise, because I simply can't understand the cleaning frenzy. No dog would eat the stuff on your wall, and it's definitely not a kezayis....and dirt is not chametz. Why drive yourself nuts?
Very cute post, though.
Chanie- y'know- chametz can come in all shapes, sizes, and forms. I learnt this year that plastic tablecloths oftentimes have starch in them. Would a dog eat a tablecloth? Nope. But Chametz none the less.
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