No, this article is NOT too late. The timing is
perfect. Read and you will agree.
Well, it's that time of year again. Women all over the
world worrying, wondering, planning and complaining. Tension.
Worries. Wishing that the preparations were already finished.
Yes, you're right; it's those "Pre-Pesach Blues", our
attempts to clean up a year's worth of carelessness, not
paying attention to or caring about crumbs and other various
food items, but then, in just a few short marathon weeks,
having to clean and get rid of them all.
If we were talking about anything but chometz, we
would immediately see the solution: keep everything clean as
you go. But somehow, crumbs are outside our realm of serious
consideration, unless it is a month or so before Pesach.
A solution? Well, my idea is to take seriously the Torah
injunction of remembering daily our exodus from Egypt, one of
the six constant mitzvos of awareness and remembrance.
For women, it translates into being conscious of
chometz all year long, each and every day, as an
ongoing physical activity as well as a mental frame of mind.
Just think about it. Just conceive and imagine what pre-
Pesach life would be like if you knew, when cleaning for
Pesach, that your house was 96-98% chometz-free except
in places where it was stored! And it is not so difficult:
all it takes is being conscious of crumbs all year long, on a
daily basis. Not neurotically obsessed about crumbs, just
aware of where they are going, how they are getting there,
and where they don't need to be.
Before you say, "But for me, in my family, that is
absolutely impossible," please hear me out.
No matter how impractical you think my system is, just
imagine for a moment how much easier life would be without
those yearly pre-Pesach terrors may make you willing to at
least TRY my system for one year. Just visualize how much
more relaxed pre-Pesach life would be, how much easier pre-
Pesach cleaning could be, if you knew pretty
positively that there were no crumbs in any clothes drawers
and no pretzels in the lego or in the "Shoots and Ladders"
game stored on top of the hall closet. Or the kindergarten-
age story/picture books. How much less worry! Yes, you still
have to clean, but it is without that terrible tension and
looming sense of guilt.
Isn't that worth at least an attempt at implementing my
system?
At the same time, the beauty of it is that, once
established, it is really fairly easy to keep it going. It is
truly self-perpetuating, with one family member reminding
another. All it takes to get it going is getting into a
different mind frame and convincing your family that you
really are taking this seriously. And then reminding them,
constantly, until everyone naturally remembers. For new
children born into this system, it becomes a natural part of
life: they will rarely have to be reminded, and will remind
the others.
[Ed. Just as an analogy of how one acquires such a
habit, think of training a child to recite a brocha
before he eats. At the beginning, you have to be on top of
him ALL the time. Or to keep a kipa on a toddler.
Since it is something you expect him to acquire as second
nature, you just plug away at it until, voila, it comes
naturally!]
HOW TO IMPLEMENT THE SYSTEM
1. All food must be eaten at a table and, if food must
go into pocketbooks or pockets, it must be DOUBLE BAGGED. 2.
Everyone must dust themselves off before leaving the table,
and pick up any food that has dropped on the floor right
away.
Impossible? Not practical? Why?
It's just a matter of educating everyone to switch their
mindset a little. Contemplate the vision of how much easier
it is to clean for Pesach when all of your chometz is
concentrated ONLY in the kitchen - isn't it worth the effort?
You'll be saving lots of effort on general cleaning as well.
And don't you usually end up instituting most of these rules
a few weeks before Pesach, anyway? So why not get everyone to
do it all year long and not have the pre- Pesach tension?
It's coercive?
What is so terrible about training the members of your
family to eat only when sitting at a table? Why should a
mother shtup food into the mouth of her toddler as he
toddles around? How much damage will it do if Sorele is not
allowed to play with lego while eating a chocolate chip
cookie? Want to build a castle? Fine. Build a castle. Want
to eat a cookie? Fine. Come into the kitchen, sit down at the
table like a mentsch and eat as many cookies as you
want sitting down. Then dust yourself off, wipe your
hands and face, and go back to building that castle. [This
should be part of chinuch. Food is important, it has a
function, and for Jews, eating should be a conscious act,
just as should brochos before and after. It is all one
and the same idea.]
Moishele will not die of hunger if we refuse to allow
him to wander around the living room nibbling on a peanut
butter sandwich. No trauma will develop in anyone once
everyone realizes that you are serious when you say, "No food
taken outside the doorposts of this kitchen." This is the
halachically correct way to eat, too, besides that crumbs do
have a certain sanctity. And when eating in the dining room,
merely pick up any food that you drop, immediately, and brush
yourself off from crumbs when leaving the table.
If I am conscious about Pesach in November by double-
bagging the box of cookies I put into my purse, I am only
benefitting, since it takes only a second to do it and it
makes it that much easier to clean my pocketbooks on
erev Pesach. If I don't allow Rochele to put a piece
of bar-mitzva cake in her coat pocket to take home, even if
it is partially wrapped in a napkin, think how much easier it
will be to clean coat pockets erev Pesach. You want
the cake? Fine. Eat it. If not, eat what is at home. It's for
someone else? Come prepared with a double plastic bag [which
takes up no room in your pocket and will become second
nature] or hold it in your hand.
It's not so hard and not so complicated. And definitely,
not so traumatic, as long as you stick to your guns
pleasantly, and make it mandatory behavior for everyone in
the family, including yourself.
Yes, these behavioral changes may take a few months to
sink in. But once they are habitual, they will forever change
your pre-Pesach physical and mental- emotional life. And, in
fact, you may even reap additional benefits as well.
We all know that the more conscious we are of things,
the more aware we are as people, and thus, the more potential
we have for being sensitive, considerate and thoughtful: in
short, better people. Being aware of what we do and learning
to anticipate the effects of our behavior on others, or as a
long range effect, is central to a Torah-true life.
If we and our families become aware of where and when we
are dropping crumbs, perhaps it will make us more aware of,
and more sensitive to, the implications of other things we
do. If Chaim doesn't think to pick up the cracker that he
accidentally dropped on the floor, is it so strange that he
doesn't think to pick up the briefcase he dropped next to the
couch instead of putting it away in its place?
Not caring about, or, even worse, not paying attention
to things we do easily leads to ignoring things, being
oblivious. And that is a short step to being selfish. "Why
should I have to bother picking up what I dropped? Someone
else will probably do it eventually..."
Taking this a step further, to a general sense of
responsibility, I think that it is very important to train
ourselves and our family members to be conscious of, and to
think through, the results of leaving items strewn
around, whether it is crumbs, articles of clothing or
important papers. Because I see a direct correlation between
being sloppy [which means thinking sloppy or not thinking at
all] and being non- or inconsiderate. And being
inconsiderate, I believe, is a major step towards becoming
thoughtless - which also leads, quite naturally and
effortlessly, to obliviousness, and then, directly, to
ingratitude, one of the basest of traits.
Becoming more aware of ourselves and of the effects of
what we do on others can only benefit us and our families.
The person who becomes sensitized to picking up crumbs that
s/he dropped is probably more likely to pick up the shoes
that they left on the living room floor, and to stop and pick
up the can of corn that they accidently knocked off the
grocery store shelf, rather than leaving it for someone else
to pick up - or trip over.
We worry about the effects of our speech on ourselves
and on others. But what about our actions, or lack of them?
Do we really think that there is no effect on a person if
they are not trained to be constantly aware of the effects of
what they do? And aren't crumbs and cookies a good place to
start? The little things...
How far removed is carelessness and negligence from that
initial obliviousness?
Making people more aware of their actions and the
effects on others, making people more sensitive to the
repercussions of their acts and how they impact on other
people around them - aren't these some of the things we hope
we know and that we hope our children will learn?
Why not learn it via Pesach?
[Yated can't help adding its expansion on this excellent
idea. Consider the renewal concept, the burning of the
chometz and the bad habits within us. Pesach was
surely not divinely designed as a torture exercise but as a
LESSON to be carried over to the rest of the year.]
Why not do so?
Author of many great Pesach and all-year-round gifts
for the bookshelf: HAPPY HINTS FOR A SUCCESSFUL ALIYA
(Feldheim); A CHILDREN'S TREASURY OF SEPHARDIC TALES
(Artscroll) and her recently published book, ON BUS DRIVERS,
DREIDELS AND ORANGE JUICE (Feldheim). Tziva Ehrlich-Klein
writes for many publications in Israel, England and the U.S.
and has edited TO DWELL IN THE PALACE (Feldheim), an
anthology on life in Israel - which your editor highly
recommends.
