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Pre-Passover cleaning: A man's perspective
By Rabbi Berel Wein
http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
THE Jewish world will shortly -- and bravely -- confront the great holiday of Pesach (Passover) and
its myriad preparatory requirements. One of the time-honored rituals in
Jewish households is the pre-Pesach house cleaning frenzy that overwhelms
the family, especially the female part thereof. The eradication of chometz (leaven)
from the house is only the pious front that is put forward to rationalize
the otherwise irrational drive to put everything in the house in its proper
place, shiny, spotless and dusted.
Every useful item that is needed for
daily efficiency in the home, and especially in my study, can no longer be
found because it has been placed "where it belongs." Of course, over the
course of time as the year progresses, usually by Shavuos (Pentecost), these items so
necessary for comfortable living are no longer "where they belong" but
rather "where I can find them." But that it is grist for the mill of
another column that I may yet write some day.
My task in Pesach cleaning is mainly relegated to explaining why the
ruthless cleaning going on before my eyes and the movement of my tapes,
papers, and books to "where they belong" is not really necessary, in strict
halachic (Jewish legal) terms. I know that this a doomed cause as far as I am concerned,
since Jewish women from time immemorial have not trusted the "leniency" of
halacha when it comes to pre-Pesach house cleaning. But at least I go
through the motions of attempting to mitigate the household whirlwind that
always accompanies the advent of the great holiday of freedom and
redemption. However, my real task before Pesach is to dust, spray with a
protective spray and place in order -- "where they belong" -- my books. Since
I have acquired a sizable library of books over the years, this is no small
task.
I am a procrastinator by nature when it comes to executing household
chores. Nevertheless, I have a great sense of anticipation when it comes to
the pre-Pesach cleaning of my books and placing them in correct order on my
library's shelves.
Books are memories. I remember the circumstances and
places where I purchased most of my books. I can identify which are the
books of my youth and spring and which are the ones I bought in my later
years. I see the books that I purchased out of my saved coins when I was in
the yeshiva (I never smoked because I needed that cigarette money for
books) and I am flooded by the serene and joyous memories of those golden
years of intensive Torah study and the camaraderie of friends that yeshiva
life engendered.
I remember that this is the book that I used when studying
with this particular holy teacher of mine and even though he is now long
since gone from the woes of this world, he is still alive to me as I again
open and look into that book. I carefully dust the two books that I have
from my grandfather's library and remember the piece of sugar that he put
in my mouth when as a child I correctly interpreted the words of Rashi for
him. That sweetness has never departed from me. It has nurtured me on many
a dark and disappointing day in my life.
The world correctly identified the Jewish people as being the "People of
the Book." It is "the book" that has preserved us as a people and
revitalized Jewish life in all places and times. For "the book" -- the
Bible, the Talmud, the love of learning, the intellectual stimulus and the
respect for scholarship and scholars -- is the collective memory of the
Jewish people. In telling us what was, the book also informs us as to what
is now and what will yet be
. One cannot approach Pesach without the gift of
memory. For Pesach is all memory. And therefore the household cleaning that
precedes it is also part of the necessary process of memory. It may be
chided, but never scoffed at. Pesach and its memories are why we are here
and why we have the right to be here. It is paradoxical how getting rid of
the chometz allows the memories suppressed by our everyday preoccupations
to flood back into our minds and hearts.
So, let us get on cheerfully with
our Pesach cleaning. One never knows what one will find while cleaning the
house for
JWR contributor Rabbi Berel Wein is one of Jewry's foremost historians and
founder of the Destiny Foundation. He resides in Jerusalem. You may contact Rabbi
Wein by clicking here or calling 1-800-499-WEIN (9346).
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