Let's Talk About Chametz

This coming week is all about chametz. Technically, this is food with leavening agents that are forbidden during the festival of Pesach. Yeast, and many items that puff up when in contact with water (unless you are Sefardi, or Italian - it's not as complicated as it feels) are removed from your home down to the last crumb you can find. And then, throughout the festival, you eat only permitted foods. No challah for Shabbat, but matzah. No pancakes for breakfast but matzah brei. Sheets of matzah replace lasagne. Balls of matzah cook in broth. And we eat too much of Nigella's flourless chocolate cake. Or Ottolenghi's. Or your grandmother's.

So this is a time for spring-cleaning. But we don't just clean the kitchen, there is also the idea of a spiritual cleansing. How puffed up are our egos? What emotional chametz do we need to discard? 

This week I received a gift. Someone who had been a friend many years ago, but I felt had let me down badly maybe ten years back, they wrote me a brief note. For all these years I held onto my anger. Every time I saw something from them on social media, the feelings would blow up and I'd be mad all over again. What a lot of energy I invested in those feelings. And I couldn't, or wouldn't let them go.

Nu, we met up by chance at a Zoom gathering the other day. The next day they sent me a brief note:  "glad to see you so happy". And on seeing a message from them my anger did not blow up. No, my anger melted away. It's gone, really gone. What a blessing! I feel like some chametz has been removed from my heart. A perfect start to the preparation for Pesach. Thank you.

Wishing good luck to all who will be searching for chametz this week.

A Passover Striptease

I see in the Jewish Chronicle this week the following story of Talmudic logic:

"by Keren David

Scrubbing brushes and vacuum cleaners are the recognised weapons in the annual war against all things leavened. But one religious man has found a novel use for the humble sock. Arieh Yerushalmi, 28, of Bat Yam was so angry about the sale of chametz during Pesach that he stripped naked in a local supermarket — save for the strategically placed sock. Yerushalmi had been incensed by a court ruling allowing the sale of leavened goods in supermarkets because they are not designated as public places, unlike open air markets. In protest, the yeshivah student stripped off his regular Charedi clothes to reveal the message “This isn’t public?” in large writing on his abdomen. He told reporters that he had deployed the sock because of his religious principles, but “the shame is not mine”.

Yerushalmi argued that he should not be prosecuted because he had not stripped in a public place. The police are expected to ask Rishon Le-Zion Magistrates’ Court to seek a psychiatric report. He also stripped off for a Pesach protest last year and police fear it may become an annual ritual. For now, he is worried about the reaction of family and friends: “I guess they don’t see things like I do.”"