Passover 5785

Cleaning Out the Spiritual Hametz

By the time this newsletter comes out, many of us will be well into our preparations for Pesah, the Passover holiday that starts after Shabbat on April 12.  As the traditional among us know, this can be a lot of work because hametz is strictly prohibited throughout the holiday.  For those who may not know, hametz is any leavened bread product, defined by the rabbis as any product where wheat, barley, oat, spelt, or rye flour was not fully baked more than 18 minutes after coming into contact with water.  That means to prepare, there’s cleaning, there’s switching dishes, there’s kashering cooking appliances, and more so that they are cleaned out of hametz before the holiday begins.

But while we focus intently (sometimes obsessively) on cleaning and getting every last crumb of bread out from our homes, we sometimes forget the spiritual side of what we’re doing.  In Hasidic thought, hametz is not only the physical, leavened bread products, but there’s spiritual hametz, too—those things in our hearts that, like leaven, puff us up, such as pride, ego, and self-importance.  Or, perhaps more broadly, hametz may be all the things inside of us to which we might feel spiritually enslaved—anxiety, depression, addiction, loneliness, regret, hurt, loss, anger, grief, trauma, and so many more.  Pesah, in this interpretation, isn’t only about people leaving slavery to move into freedom and the hope of breaking away from tyranny and oppression—although, with so many of our Israeli brothers and sisters still being held hostage, we daily pray and hope for their freedom, too.  It is also hope that each of us can break free from our own spiritual ailments, from those things that are holding us back and preventing us from being the people we wish we could be.  Which is why the Haggadah tells us, “Each person is obligated to see himself/herself as if he/she personally came out of Egypt.”  Because we all are in our own personal, spiritual Egypts, praying for a way to get out.

As so often happens in Judaism, the spiritual work is paralleled by the physical work.  We still have to clean our kitchens and houses (sorry!) but during this time leading up to Passover, we also take some time to think about the spiritual work we need to do so that we can be free from our spiritual slavery.  Because it is only when each of us makes our own personal Exodus, when each of us is freed from our own spiritual slavery, that we as a people can experience the redemption the Pesah holiday promises.

Wishing each of you a hag kasher v’sameah, and may we each find the spiritual freedom we seek this Passover.

Rabbi Stephen Henkin 

If you love kibbutzing with your friends after Saturday morning services, please put "Cookies & Kiddush" on your calendar for Saturday, April 19.
 
"Cookies & Kiddush" is an opportunity to you to participate by bringing your favorite Passover cookies, cakes, and other treats to the Reading Room for sharing, since the TBE Kitchens will be closed.
 
The Foundation is supplying some items, but we need your help!