This article is a form of confession.

This message is a form of confession.

Passover is coming, and I am filled with a mixture of emotions - fear and dread are at the top of the list, edged out by pure joy!!

A large percentage of my family will be in town to spend the yontif with me; Jesse, Lena and Talya, in-laws from El Paso, nieces and nephews and good friends. Only my oldest son, Luke, will not make it this year.

So, the joy is obvious, but why the fear and dread?

I suppose I have to admit that Passover week is the time of year when my 'inner meshugganer' comes out full force. In a few days I will pack up all the hometz (leavened products such as cereal, food with corn syrup, and most packaged foods), together with all three sets of my regular dishes, pots and pans, utensils, etc., and put it all in the garage. Then, I will kosher my kitchen with scalding water so that it is free of the hometz. (The Torah states that no leavened food stuffs can be in our homes for the week of Pesach). This operation also includes firing up the ovens, stove and sweeping every last crumb out of the corners of cupboards and rooms. Then I will unpack two more sets of dishes used only during the week of Passover, pots and all the paraphernalia. Once properly set up, I will begin to cook all the dishes the family has come to expect. It's a monumental task that I love to complain about every year. Hence, the fear and dread part of my Passover experience.

I started keeping kosher when I was still in high school, even though my family did not keep a kosher home as their own parents did. It has been a core commitment for me - partly as a symbol of my devotion to Jewish spirituality and identity, and partly as an expression of my self-discipline. Keeping kosher is my concrete, daily reminder that Jewish rituals and traditions, including those which cause us some inconvenience, help to anchor me to a specific place in our world-- a member of the Jewish people.

As I have gotten older, and, I hope, a little wiser, I have become more liberal in many aspects of my life; but with regard to kashrut, I have not wavered.  

Why?

The closest I can come to an answer is an experience I had about a dozen years ago when I began to travel internationally. I was in Malaysia, sharing the lone taxi at a provincial airport with a family who had just arrived from Saudi Arabia. They were famished, and asked if the taxi could stop at a roadside Colonel Sanders. They asked me if I would join them. (The dad was a high school math teacher who read the Jerusalem Post online and loved Israel!).

I had to think deeply about their offer. I, too, was very hungry from a long hot day. They were so open and kind, and I didn't want to offend them. The food was all Halal, which is very close to kosher. No Jew was within a thousand kilometers. Who would know?

But then I asked myself if that was who I am. Frankly, it was pretty clear - I am who I am, wherever I go. And I am nothing without my own sense of integrity and continuity.

When I declined, I gingerly explained to my new friend that I followed the ancient system of kashrut. His face lit up and he said, "God bless you."  

Kashrut and my 'inner meshugganer' come out full force at Pesach in order to yank me back to my deeper self, the person I aspire to be: grounded, ethical, connected spiritually to the generations gone by. It might sound pretty corny to some people; sometimes it sounds corny even to me. But there is an inherent kedusha -holiness-in the practice of kashrut that still speaks to me powerfully. It is my form of devotion.

Ultimately, I think that the elaborate pre-Pesach rituals for preparing the home and the kitchen are really more about preparing the person. At whatever level we choose to practice Passover comes each year to force every Jew to reflect on the things that keep us in spiritual or physical bondage. With so many steps required to prepare for the Seder, and the fifteen steps of the Seder ritual itself each level of preparation allows for an ever heightened spiritual consciousness, born of self-reflection, perhaps ultimately leading to real freedom.

Let your 'inner meshugganer' out!!!

With Blessings for a Chag Kasher v'Sameach

A Joyous Passover

 

Rabbi Steven L. Silver, DD