Raizel's sick, so I'm writing. Flu. Overdid it Pesach
cleaning. She's usually good about pacing herself, but this
time she got nervous due to her brother-in-law coming from
Monsey for Pesach. He's a Kashrus Mashgiach. If a house is
Kosher L'Pesach for one's own family, it's Kosher L'Pesach
for guests, but when a Mashgiach visits...and he didn't say
if he would eat by us, either. I guess anyone would go a
little nuts.
The children and I figured we'd finish the Pesach cleaning,
but Raizel was still worried, afraid we wouldn't do a perfect
job. To spare her nerves, I invented a Chometz Detector.
Works kind of on the same principle as a Geiger counter. Can
set it to either pick up all Chometz, just Chometz the size
of a Kezayis or larger or only Chometz that's not nullified
from achilas kelev. Got a switch to include / exclude
kitniyos, like rice cake crumbs, too.
Here's how it works: When the room is clear of Chometz, the
machine is quiet. Any Chometz present, the detector starts
clicking. The closer the operator moves toward the Chometz
the faster it clicks. 'Course, we clean each room thoroughly
and we'll be doing our usual eight hour Bedikas
Chometz. The machine is just so Raizel will know we did a
good job.
We did a trial run for Raizel in the hallway, and were
surprised when the machine started clicking. Who keeps
Chometz in the HALLWAY ? Pivoted until we located the source.
When we had moved, our former neighbors gave us a wall
decoration with the shivas haminim: including wheat.
Removed the wall decoration and all quiet again.
One of the older children came over to see how the machine
was working, and it started clicking. We hadn't served any
actual Chometz for the past two days, so it took all of us
wracking our brains to remember that she had gotten stitches
the week before. The Vitamin E we'd been putting on to
promote healing was Chometzdik (comes from wheat germ).
Future refinements would be to add a display screen that
specifies the amount of Chometz present to make it easier to
locate. If I can get it to go down to the molecular level, it
would be useful for institution or hotel use, if they find
one of the hundreds of utensils lying around and want to
determine if it's Chometzdik or Pesachdik. Once it's at the
molecular level, I could put in a milchig / fleishig /
treif indicator, too. Also have to find a way to exclude
areas being sold to a goy.
Naturally, the machine isn't to be used as a substitute for
Pesach cleaning. If I end up mass producing and marketing
them, I bet I could put in a sensor that doesn't allow the
detector to work if a certain level of dust of grime is
nearby. I envision it being used after cleaning each room,
then again after Bedikas Chometz to make sure all ten
pieces of bread were found and to locate any Chometz that
somehow crept into the house after the rooms were cleaned.
Anyway, Raizel is calm, and her brother-in-law thought the
detector was so gevaldig that he'll be eating by us
all the meals of Pesach.
Chag Kosher V'samayach.
Editor's note: Perhaps Yehuda could invent the Shaatnez
Detector which all clothing gemachs have been dreaming about
. . . Though I must report progress in this area: Many
shaatnez testers (try the Meah Shearim one) will give a
reduction on testing used clothing, especially if you say it
was bought in a gemach. Gevaldig!
