Preparing for Pesach, spiritually
By Rabbi Yossi Kenigsberg
March 28, 2008
As the holiday of Purim has concluded, the costumes are placed in storage for another year and the remnants of the hamantaschen are finally consumed. We now begin to prepare for the next milestone in the year's Jewish journey through the calendar.
In less than four weeks, Pesach will begin and we will enjoy the lofty seder experience. Many of us have already begun the process of preparing shopping lists, taking inventory of products and ingredients, contemplating guest lists and menus. Certainly, the labor intensive, arduous process of cleaning our homes for the holiday is at the forefront of everyone's upcoming agenda.
There is no other holiday that requires this level of preparation. The Torah commands us to have a zero tolerance policy for chametz, leaven products, on Pesach. We are obligated to remove all leaven from our sight and possession. All nooks and crannies of our homes must be vigilantly inspected during the cleaning process. All areas are checked and rechecked to make sure that even suspicious looking snippets are discarded. On the night before Pesach, an additional final investigation is conducted by candlelight to ensure that all our original inspections were rigorously scrupulous. Finally, all leftover chametz is burned and declared as "dust of the earth".
Why does the Torah demand such consuming vigilance in terms of our relationship with leaven products? Why would it not be sufficient to simply curtail eating and cooking these items rather than taking such apparently extreme and extraordinary precautions?
Our Sages inform us that leaven is symbolic of the yetzer hara, the evil instinct that has an abode within every individual. Leaven or yeast is the agent that enables dough to rise. As a result, it symbolizes an arrogant and pompous attitude. A person often inflates his or her importance, which often leads to conceited and self -absorbed behavior. This type of attitude is the source of sin. When a person becomes haughty, he or she feels entitled and empowered to rebel against God or act derisively towards others judged to inferior.
Our directions to be supremely cautious about removing chametz prior to Pesach is, therefore, not only in terms of actual leaven but an imperative to cleanse ourselves of all vestiges of sin and eliminate from ourselves all aspects of selfishness and pursuits of self aggrandizement. The search for chametz is not only a physical examination for breadcrumbs, but also a process of an inner search and introspection as well.
This is an opportunity to delve into the recesses of our personalities in order to evaluate any weakness and attempt to rectify it. One the great rabbis, the Ari Hakadosh, used to add the following prayer after concluding the ritual search for chametz: "Just as I remove chametz from my house and possession, so you Hashem remove the spirit of impurity from the earth and our evil instinct from within us."
The reason that this internal scrutinizing is relegated to Pesach is because this is the time of year commemorating our birth as a nation. It was on Pesach that God miraculously liberated the Jewish people from the enslavement of the Egyptian regime and provided us with sovereignty under His laws.
At the commencement of a new project or relationship, everything should be as perfect as possible. At this time, there is no room for even an iota of imperfection. As a result, we are instructed to perform a total cleansing of our homes and by extension our own character. Pesach initiated our national association with God and each year we are provided with guidance through the laws of Pesach how to renew and reconfirm that connection in the most noble and pristine form possible.
As we begin the methodology of preparing for this precious Yom Tov, let us try to focus on not only cleaning our residences and removing the physical traces of leaven but also purging the negative components of our behavior and purifying our souls as well.
Rabbi Kenigsberg is an educator who lives in