Passover Freedom Event – Holiday Prep, Part II

Participating shops & their specials are listed here and you can search on Etsy with the keywords: "pesach" or "etsychai" or “passover”.  Please remember to use the word "Passover" in Notes to Seller when shopping with EtsyChai members this week!

Thanks to Linda Blatchford of lindab142.etsy.com for today’s article.  Part I can be found here.  Today I’m not going to break up the text with pictures, instead, look for some wonderful links following.  Thanks! - Tammy

 Passover Cleaning Part 2

“Every nook and cranny of the house must be cleaned and rid of hametz (any food containing leaven or foods not permissible to be eaten on Passover). The sofa cushions are removed, vacuumed and I use sofa covers so the matzah crumbs don’t get all over everything. The coffee table and sofa side tables get news “tablecloths” too.

Our kitchen is a galley kitchen and we don’t have a pantry, so the new Passover foods and utensils that I purchase are left in their packages in the garage until the cleaning/changeover is complete.

The oven, microwave and dishwasher need to be thoroughly cleaned and a cup of water is boiled in the microwave to cleanse it. The dishwasher is run empty for one cycle. The oven and burners are turned on for a short amount of time after the last piece of bread is burned in the house (usually the morning after the search for hametz or the night before the first Seder).

Metal and glass objects may be kashered for Passover use by not using them for two days and soaking them in cold water for at least 24 hours – and I usually pour boiling water over them just to be sure. If a pot or pan has a plastic or wood handle, that can NOT be koshered.

Some rabbis now allow people to store their hametz in the garage, as long as it’s sold. Jews typically sell their hametz during Passover. Your rabbi or spiritual leader will take care of this for you if you fill out the form they provide. If you have pets and plan to keep feeding them regular food, they are usually sold too. The reason is that we do not “own any hametz” during Passover, the time when we are commanded not to eat leavened bread.

After doing a complete and thorough cleaning of your house/apartment/dorm room, you should throw away any opened packages of hametz, thereby beginning Pesah in a hametz-free environment.

Consider donating all new and closed hametz items to a local food pantry.

Because of the complexities of our economy, it may be far too costly to get rid of all of your sealed and unopened hametz. For this reason, a ceremony was developed which in effect "sells" your hametz to a non-Jew for the duration of the holiday.

Shtar Harsha'ah
This symbolic sale is carried out by a rabbi whom you authorize by filling out a shtar harsha'ah, or document of permission. The rabbi then sells your hametz by writing a shtar m'khirah, or document of sale.

If you'd like to learn more about the origin of these practices, you can find the sources in the Shulhan Arukh (Code of Jewish Law, 1554 CE) of Rabbi Yosef Karo, in the volume Orah Hayyim, sections 445, 446 and 448:3. Other books like Isaac Klein's A Guide to Jewish Religious Practice and Michael Strassfeld's The Jewish Holidays are good resources as well.

For up-to-date information on prohibited and permitted foods, check out the Rabbinical Assembly Web site at www.rabbinicalassembly.org.

Sephardic Jews may eat rice and beans if that is their Passover custom, but Ashkenazic Jews may not. The way I describe it to my friends is we don’t eat anything that “puffs.”

Like many people, I have separate Passover dishes. Those are washed and placed on the countertop (koshered and covered with wax paper or tin foil). I don’t have the room to replace everything in my cabinets, so I tape an X on the cabinets we can’t use for Passover (most of them). Passover dishes, pots and pans and food are stored on the countertops and top of the refrigerator.”

Thanks again Linda, for a great article!

    

   

        

 

Participating shops & their specials are listed here and you can search on Etsy with the keywords: "pesach" or "etsychai" or “passover”.  Please remember to use the word "Passover" in Notes to Seller when shopping with EtsyChai members this week!