Pesach countdown -- 4 Days to Go, Part III

Enough about the cleaning!

We are also spending some time thinking about how to make two seders on consecutive nights with pretty much the same people distinctive and fun. The children of this household are old enough that, if it were just us chickens, we would have a second-night seder that was mostly discussion and (lots of) digression. This year, however, two other families will be joining us both nights, along with a few other assorted individuals and these families bring children with them! Always fun.

The first night, we will do what we normally do when young children are around. Years ago, we found a haggadah that included a puppet play that tells the story of Exodus called We Tell It To Our Children.

There are some aspects of this particular seder plan that we choose not to follow, but we excerpted the play, added to it here and there, and use it most years for at least one seder. We call our version of the play "They Came From Goshen" for reasons that are obvious to everyone in my family, but we give full credit to Mary Ann Barrows Wark, who wrote the haggadah.

 

As much fun as we have with this puppet play, we don't want to do it two nights in a row with the same people. So I've been online looking for ideas for making the second night memorable. More on that later -- I don't want to give anything away just yet.

Pesach countdown -- 4 Days to Go, Part II

Time has been very strange. Tomorrow my sons who attend college in California will be coming home. They will be here for Shabbat and then they become slave labor because on Sunday we will finish cleaning for Pesach and we will switch our kitchen from everyday life to Pesach readiness.

I have actually been taking it kind of easy in terms of cleaning this year. It's not entirely deliberate -- I damaged the knee that wasn't already hurt and some kinds of movement are, quite literally, a pain.

Since my knee is generally less painful in the morning than in the evening, I have been trying to do the  bulk of the cleaning and other preparations in the morning. This morning, it was time to defrost the freezer:

Because we have been getting rid of food (mostly by eating it), there wasn't an incredible amount of food in the freezer. (You should see it at the end of the summer when it's full of stuff from the garden!) When I replaced the food, there was still a lot of available space:

The food on the top shelf is for Pesach use. Of the rest, some will be eaten in the next couple of days, but most will be sold with our other chametz. The freezer would be fuller, but I haven't replaced the two cases (a year's worth) of Girl Scout cookies that arrived a couple of week ago.

Also, because we won't be preparing and eating any meat dishes between now and the start of Pesach, I enlisted some help and moved all the meat dishes, utensils, appliances, etc., out to one of the shelves in the garage that we cleared off at the beginning of the week:

Tomorrow, I hope to start moving the milchig dishes out. If not, the slave labor college men will do that on Saturday night.

We did yet another sort of the items in the pantry. A few more things went into the donate and give away piles. A very few things will be added to the shelf of things that will be sold. And there are still a few things left -- we still have to eat over the next few days, after all:

But the cupboards are looking decidedly bare. This is a good thing four days before Pesach.

Pesach countdown -- 4 Days to Go, Part I

I really meant to share this sooner, but things always seem to intervene. We do have an overall plan for Pesach preparation. We got this calendar for Pesach prep years ago and refer to it every year even though we don't follow it exactly.

If you've been paying attention to this blog, you'll see that we have more-or-less followed the general plan even though the family is reduced in size (at least temporarily) and the "children" are all adults now.

Calendar for Pesach Preparation

We originally got this calendar from the school our daughter attended for Kindergarten. I'll present it first pretty much as we received it, then share my comments about this schedule.

Four Weeks Before:

--Do not buy or open new items like pickles, jams, flour, etc.
--Use up old stocks, especially refrigerated items.
--Look for and shop for Pesach staples that run out quickly, e.g., spices, ketchup, mayonnaise, preserves, oil, macaroons, grape juice, etc.
--Plan menus and shopping lists.

Three Weeks Before:

Order meat, wine, and any special candies.
Begin spring cleaning, starting with areas farthest from the kitchen, then ask family members not to take food into these rooms.

Two Weeks Before:

--Clean living room and dining room areas, then don't eat in them.
--Buy any dairy products that require certification and store them in the refrigerator in separate wrappers clearly marked for Pesach.
--Buy the rest of the Pesach supplies.
--Arrange to sell chametz.

Last Week:

The following schedule must be adjusted for Shabbat, with the work scheduled for the days before Shabbat being done one day earlier. B'dikat chametz is performed on the evening before the first seder.

Day 6:
Finish cleaning rest of house; prepare dishwasher.
Day 5:
Clean kitchen and change dishes.
Day 4:
Shop for fresh food - fruits, vegetables, fish, etc.
Day 3:
Cook for seder - baking, salads, dressings, etc.
Day 2:
Cook for seder - soup, meats, side dishes except last minute vegetables.
Perform B'dikat Chametz (the search for chametz) in the evening.
Day 1:
Eat no real matzah before the seder.
Burn chametz before noon.
Set table.
Last minute cooking.
Seder!

Our Reaction to This Schedule and How We Adapt It

Four weeks before, we start looking at what we have on our shelves. We do our best to use up everything we can before Pesach so that we don't have chametz in the house. We usually go through all our food storage areas and  prepare an inventory of food, which we then divide into something like the following categories:

-- Food to use up, discard, or give away.

-- Unopened food we won't use and can donate to a food pantry.

-- Unopened food that we will sell to a non-Jew for the duration of Pesach.

We plan our meals between Purim and Pesach as carefully as we can to use up as much of what we already have as possible. If it looks like we're going to end up with unopened packages of things like cereal, pasta, flour, we set those items aside for Project Mazon, which distributes the items to food pantries in our area. Since we often buy in bulk, we always end up with a certain amount of food (often frozen) that it would be a significant financial loss to replace. This food we sell to a non-Jew through our rabbi.

These days there are a plethora of kosher-for-Passover items available that replicate virtually everything one eats during the year. We don't buy these, as a rule, so shopping for hard-to-find items like kosher-for-Passover noodles or muffin mixes rarely enters the picture for us.  We do start buying kosher-for-Passover foods as much as a month before Pesach, mainly because we like to spread out the economic impact of changing all the food in the house as much as possible.

Three weeks before we do start a general scrubbing and cleaning throughout the house. We discourage everyone from carrying food out of the kitchen/dining area, but it is not yet forbidden. We need to do our final Pesach cleaning a little closer to the event because nothing will stay clean in our house for more than a day or so.

Our main activity at this point is determining what we're going to eat, who we're going to eat with, and what we want to do at the seder.

Two weeks before we start working toward the kitchen. The bedrooms are ruthlessly scrubbed, vacuumed, swept, polished, dusted. As we finish each room, we post a sign on the door so that we'll remember not to take in food.

The last week before Pesach we finish our shopping and cleaning. The areas we use most are left until the day public areas of the house, clearing out all the cabinets, and finishing our shopping. Any non-Pesachdik food in the house that has not been sold will be moved out to garage.

We will search the house for chametz sometime after it becomes dark, then start washing and putting away our Pesach dishes. We traditionally eat a very chametz-dik breakfast on the day of the first seder. If we're lucky, the weather is nice enough to have this meal outdoors. Afterwards, we clean up and burn the leftovers as well as the chametz we found on our search the night before.

Then we go in, finish changing the kitchen if necessary, pause to catch our breaths, and start cooking like mad.

What Other People Do to Prepare for Pesach

Many people we know make a corner of their kitchen kosher for Passover and prepare foods in advance. We don't do this for two reasons - I could never figure out just how to do this, and we like the idea of commemorating our Exodus from Egypt by our haste in having to prepare everything on the last day.

Pesach countdown -- 8 Days to Go

The big effort in preparing physically for Pesach involves removing chametz from the house. We attack this effort on two fronts --

1 -- Getting rid of the food that contains chametz, either by eating it, giving it away, or (in a very few cases) throwing it away.

2 -- Cleaning.

I've talked a little about the business of clearing out and using up the food, but tonight I'm going to spend just a little time talking about Pesach cleaning.

Pesach cleaning can be as rigorous as you like. Or as superficial as you like, though not everyone would agree with me about this. Here's the thing -- you can choose to clean every crevice in your home, shake out all the books just in case someone dropped a crumb of chametz and it got caught in the pages, vacuum your cars, scrub every surface, and so on. Or you can do a good general cleaning and rely on a couple of formulas for the rest. More about that in a few paragraphs.

First of all, we are commanded to remove the chametz, by cleaning, by using it up, by selling it, or by whatever other means we choose. After doing whatever cleaning is necessary for our peace of mind, we search for any chametz that we may have forgotten or overlooked in a ceremony known as bedikat chametz. Bedikat chametz is usually performed the night before the first seder. Here's how it's done:

Most people hide at least 10 pieces of chametz (bread, crackers, cookies, pasta, etc.) around the house so that they will be sure to find something on their search.

The lights are turned out and a candle is lit.

With a feather (or the lulav saved from Sukkot) and the lit candle, you go around the house and find the chametz -- not only that which was prepared and hidden, but any other chametz that you may have missed while cleaning up (it happens).

After your search, you recite the appropriate blessing and the first of two nullification formulas: All leaven and anything leavened that is in my possession, which I have neither seen nor removed, and about which I am unaware, shall be considered nullified and ownerless as the dust of the earth. 

This formula allows you to hold aside some chametz-dik foods to have early the next morning. My family is very fond of having donuts for our breakfast the day of the first seder.

In the morning, usually by around 10:0 a.m., you burn the chametz that was set aside the night before and say a second nullification formula: All leaven and anything leavened that is in my possession, whether I have seen it or not, whether I have observed it or not, whether I have removed it or not, shall be considered nullified and ownerless as the dust of the earth.

This process is somewhat simplified. For full information, you should check a traditional haggadah, a web site,
or instructions from your local rabbi or synagogue. But almost all of it is fun -- especially the search by candlelight at night and the fire in the morning.

I love the simplicity of the nullification formula. Assuming that you have made a sincere effort to remove your chametz, anything that you missed (for example, the little snack crackers that your cats knocked under the radiators and decide to fish out halfway through your seder) is now dust of the earth. It is not chametz because chametz is food and you don't eat dust of the earth. Dust is something that you sweep up and throw away.

Many years ago, I attended a class on Pesach cleaning taught by an Orthodox rabbi. He said something in that class that I have always held close to my heart while preparing for Pesach. He told us that "Dirt is not chametz." So I clean, but I don't make myself crazy worrying about every little microscopic speck that might or might not be chametz.

Not everyone feels the same way about cleaning and chametz. My belief is that Pesach gives us a chance to examine our lives -- not only the places in which we live and eat, but also the way in which we live. I do not believe that G-d wants us to make ourselves crazy while preparing our homes for Pesach. In my mind, shaking out the pages of the 10,000 or so books that we own to make sure that there are no crumbs lodged between the pages is .... uh, yeah, crazy. But opinions differ. Each person has to do what is right for their particular circumstances.

Okay, having said all that, we did accomplish something today that moves us toward being ready for Pesach in 8 days. We cleared off some shelves in the garage so that we have a place to move our regular dishes:

I think those cornstick pans were put out there last year and never brought back into the house. Other than that, we have 3 shelves ready to hold dishes and other kitchen paraphernalia.

Pesach countdown -- 12 Days to Go

Got the vacuum cleaner back today and finally got the first room cleaned up for Pesach. Almost. The bed still needs to be remade, but that's incidental.

This bedroom belongs to one of the college students who is living away from home, so it was relatively easy. Additionally, it allows me to address the question of "what about the animals?". This room was relatively easy because no one has been eating in here and I didn't have to worry too much about finding and getting rid of chametz. Even so, I did find a bit of questionable food stuff:

A bag of candy? Might be okay, might not. But since it's questionable, it gets tossed.

The question of the animals is much more complex. As you can see in the picture of this bedroom, a cat lives here. Two, actually, but the other was hiding. There is cat food, both canned food and a canister of dry food kept in this room and fed to the cats who live here. Is their food chametz-dik? Probably not the canned food, but the dry food contains barley, which is one of the five forbidden grains. So, what to do?

There are a variety of answers to this question. It can be argued that feeding your animals pet foods that contain chametz is a violation of Pesach because you benefit from owning the food. (I would definitely argue that not feeding your animals during Pesach can be detrimental, not only to their health but to yours. But not now.) So some people feed their animals a human-food diet during Pesach -- i.e., their pets eat pretty much the same way they do.

Some Pesach-dik pet foods are now on the market, so that's another option. And pet foods that contain kitniyot (things like corn meal instead of wheat) can be owned and fed to animals even though some Jews avoid eating kitniyot during Pesach.

We have tried a variety of these methods over the years we have shared our lives with companion animals. For most of the past 20 years, however, we have had at least one cat or dog who is eating a special diet. And, after talking with our veterinarians about the potential problems of changing a pet's diet for one week, we no longer make any changes to their diets.

Instead, we change the way in which we feed the animals. We move their food and change the location in which we prepare their food. We also feed them in a different location -- for example, outdoors for the dogs instead of indoors. And, just to add a bit of meaning to these changes, we sell the animals and all their paraphernalia for the 8 days of Pesach. We keep them and theirs in the house unless their new owner should come over and pick them up (hasn't happened so far), and we feed them because not to feed them would be cruel.

Pesach countdown -- 13 Days to Go

Wow, less than two weeks to the first seder. It's time to gear up the preparations. Unfortunately, our vacuum cleaner is in the shop being repaired so it's hard to do much vacuuming. So instead of cleaning, I am focusing on general clearing up and getting rid of food.

The food in the pantry is slowly but steadily diminishing:

And a few items have been added to the Pesach food shelf, now that the things I ordered online have arrived.

I'm going to have to make some more room soon -- my sons in California are going to do some Passover shopping there before they come home next week.

I have also been involved in some fun stuff. A few years ago, I got together with a few friends and we decided to form a Rosh Hodesh group. Rosh Hodesh is traditionally a women's holiday and, over the years, groups of Jewish women have chosen to meet monthly at the New Moon (aka Rosh Hodesh) and learn or celebrate or just connect with each other. Our group is in its third year and we're still trying new things.

This year, for Rosh Hodesh Nisan (the month in which Pesach occurs), we decided to have a Chocolate Seder. For the last couple of weeks, since finishing up the Purimshpiel, we have been running around buying up chocolate and writing our own "haggadah" for our Chocolate Seder. Last night, we got together to eat chocolate and have a good time.

That's a "goody plate" for one of our members who was sick last night. Most of the rest of the chocolate will either need to be eaten (what a hardship!) or given away to a deserving non-Jewish friend. The cacoa nibs, which we used for our maror, will be saved for use by my family after Pesach.

Pesach countdown -- 19 days to go!

About two and a half weeks left before the first seder and there's still so much to do. Up to this point, the focus has been primarily on food. And this may be an unnecessary digression, but I thought I would spend a few minutes just talking about why so we obsess about food while preparing for Pesach. (Some of this obsession is detailed in the post titled "What is this Chametz stuff anyway?" which should immediately follow -- or proceed this post.)

Here's what I wrote about the preparation process in the family's old web site:

We probably spend more time thinking about and preparing for Pesach than any other holiday in the Jewish year. There are a number of reasons for this, but we chose two to expound upon:

Everything is different. It's not until Pesach rolls around each year that we realize how much of our life revolves around preparing, eating, and cleaning up after food. We empty our cabinets, pantry, and refrigerator and re-stock them with Pesach dishes and supplies. Every time we get a glass of water or a piece of fruit, we are reminded that it is Pesach.

Pesach commemorates the events that made us a people. We spend two evenings each year talking about how we were slaves in Egypt and how G-d delivered us. Each of us, in every generation, is commanded to feel as if he or she personally was delivered from slavery and brought to freedom. Two nights are not enough, so we study beforehand to prepare ourselves for discussion, and the thoughts we digest afterwards often carry us well beyond the end of Pesach.

Pesach therefore requires both  physical preparation and spiritual or intellectual preparation. We clean our house from one end to the other, top to bottom, more thoroughly than at any other time of the year. We study the Haggadah so that when that first seder begins, we can add our thoughts to the discussion. We plan our meals carefully, and begin shopping.  We try to learn some new tunes each year and make sure that everyone is familiar with them so that we can sing together during our seder.

So, as far as the physical preparation, I've been sorting through food. I do this every year and end up with lists that look something like this (only scribbled in my handwriting instead of neatly typed):

Meat
11 hot dogs (freezer)
Brisket (garage freezer)
1 whole chicken (garage freezer)
1 pkg. Hamburger meat from kosher.com (garage freezer)
1 rib-eye steak (garage freezer)
ground turkey (freezer)
turkey cubes for stir-fry (freezer)
chicken thighs (freezer)
chicken breast cubes for stir-fry (freezer)

Could be kept if not used
4 things pesto (freezer -- plus 7 in garage freezer)
Dried chile peppers (freezer)
Chile powder (freezer)
2 lb. Butter (freezer)
4-3/4 lb. Earth Balance margarine (freezer)
Open jar Nescafe instant coffee (freezer)
Whole bag orange roughy fillets (freezer)
1 cup tomatoes from garden (freezer -- plus lots more in garage freezer)
Big bag frozen fruit -- Miriam's (freezer)
2+ bags blueberries (freezer)
4+ bags strawberries (freezer)
1 bag cranberries (freezer)
1 bag peaches (freezer -- plus 3 more in garage freezer)
GS cookies (garage freezer)
3 pkg. Paskesz cookies (Garage freezer)
1 bag salmon fillets (garage freezer)
2 pkg. Greens from CSA (garage freezer)
4 big, 1 small package yellow squash from garden (garage freezer)
Dog meat (garage freezer)
Frozen juice concentrate (garage freezer)
Green chiles (garage freezer)
6 containers homemade applesauce (garage freezer)
Juice boxes (both refrigerators)

Try to use up in meals or otherwise
1 pkg. Smart dogs (freezer)
2 Italian sausages (freezer -- plus 3 boxes in garage freezer)
2 pkg. Smart Ground Mexican style TVP crumbles (freezer)
1 bag Morningstar Farm crumbles (freezer)
3 pkg. Mon Cuisine stuffed cabbage -- meat (freezer)
4 pkg. Cohen's mini franks in puff pastry (freezer)
1 pkg. Other Cohen appetizers - meat (freezer)
Fudge ripple ice cream (2 more in garage freezer)
Chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream
Mint chocolate chip ice cream (1 more in garage freezer)
Vanilla ice cream (garage freezer)
Ben & Jerry's half-baked ice cream
Maccabee mozzarella sticks -- toss (freezer)
Alexia mozzarella sticks --  (freezer)
Yeast -- probably toss (freezer)
Open pkg. Morningstar Farms Chik'n grillers (freezer - plus 1 pkg. in garage freezer)
1 bag chik'n strips -- (freezer)
1-1/2 boxes puff pastry (freezer)
Open bag salmon burgers -- 8 left (freezer)
Pinon nut barley bake (freezer)
1 pkg. Light Life fake sausage (fridge)
1 pkg. Light Life fake ham slices (fridge)
1 pizza shell -- Simon's (freezer)
Bag of chocolates -- (freezer)
Kong dog treat filled with peanut butter (freezer)
2 boxes chik'n nuggets (Garage freezer)
3 boxes Chik patties (garage freezer)
2 boxes Grillers prime (garage freezer)
1 box BBQ riblets (garage freezer)
1 box Garlic Naan (garage freezer)
3 big boxes Morningstar Farms sausages (Garage freezer)
2 jars enchilada sauce (garage fridge)
2 quarts zucchini soup (garage freezer)
1 quart broccoli soup (garage freezer)
1 quart cantelope-peach soup (garage freezer)
2 bags not-chicken soup (garage freezer)
2 salmon pieces (freezer)
2 pieces frozen cod (freezer)
Peanut butter cups -- (garage fridge)

Frozen Vegetables
Greens from CSA (garage fridge)
5 zucchini pie fillings plus 1 small filling (garage freezer)
1 pkg. French-style green beans (freezer)
2 bags frozen greens from CSA (freezer)
1 bag frozen broccoli from CSA (freezer)
2 bags store-bought broccoli (freezer)
2 pkg. Cas. Frms winter squash (freezer)
1 bag eggplant from CSA (Freezer)
1 bag frozen peas (freezer)
3 bags tater tots  (freezer)
1 bag frozen mixed vegetables  (freezer)
1 bag frozen cauliflower  (freezer)

Pesach-dik or could be used for Pesach
Eggs
Cheese (unopened only)
Elite chocolates (garage freezer)
Pesach spices, etc. (garage freezer)

From lists like these, I create menu plans to use up as much stuff as possible without buying any new ingredients. For example:

Monday 3/8 -- chicken for meat eaters with rice and mixed greens w/garlic; People's Choice for others
Tuesday 3/9 -- Broiled Tofu sandwiches
Wednesday 3/10 -- eggplant parmesan, salad
Thursday 3/11 -- pasta and seitan, garlic bread, salad
Friday 3/12 -- broccoli soup from freezer, winter squash souffle, salmon and/or cod, sweet & sour tofu
Saturday 3/13 -- enchiladas
Sunday 3/14 -- seitan and broccoli stir-fry, fried rice, salad
Monday 3/15 -- spaghetti with meatless crumbles
Tuesday 3/16 -- pinto beans with rice, chile rellenos casserole
Wednesday 3/17 -- cauliflower and cashew croquettes, green salad, peas
Thursday 3/18 -- southwest "beef" stew (uses up taco not-meat), cornbread, sald
Friday, 3/19 -- cantelope/peach soup from freezer, "sausage" and bow-tie pasta florentine, green beans
Saturday 3/20 -- enchiladas
Sunday 3/21 -- pinon nut barley bake, crustless broccoli & cottage cheese pie
Monday 3/22 -- possibly eggs ben davis (family name for an egg and cheese bagel with fake meat)
Tuesday 3/23 -- lentils & rice?
Wednesday 3/24 -- People's Choice for non-meat eaters; probably chicken from freezer for others
Thursday 3/25 -- broccoli and mushroom tart
Starting with the next meal, our college students will be home:
Friday 3/26 -- zucchini soup from freezer. small lasagne, tofu sticks
Saturday 3/27 -- enchiladas
Sunday 3/28 -- either cold sandwiches or eat out because
Monday 3/29 -- First Seder!!

Well, so far so good. Monday night, some of us did use up the unfrozen chicken and mixed greens and some rice. On Tuesday, no broiled tofu sandwiches because I should have put those down for a Sunday night when the person who really wants them will be home. Wednesday (tonight), I made a wonderful Eggplant Parmesan with organic eggplant that I got from our CSA last November and froze.

What is This Chametz Stuff Anyway?

This is an attempt to define chametz, at least as far as we use the term in our lives.

If one of the five species of grain (wheat, oats, rye, barley, spelt) comes into contact with water after the stalks have been cut off the ground, i.e., if they become fermented, they become chametz. According to our Rabbinic authorities, this fermentation takes 18 minutes. Therefore, in order to be kosher l'pesach, matzah must take less than 18 minutes to prepare from the time the water and flour are first mixed to the time the matzah comes out of the oven.

The term chametz (or sometimes, chametz-dik) is applied not only to foodstuffs, but also to dishes and utensils in which foods that are chametz have been prepared during the year.

Beans, rice, corn, and peas are not among the grains that can become chametz, but many Jews (especially those from Eastern Europe) avoid using them during Pesach. This prohibition stems from the fact that flour can be made from these foods and it might be confusing. The rabbis felt that people might be tempted to use regular flour if they were allowed to use, for example, rice flour. To avoid such confusion, the rabbis decided that these foods (known as kitniot) should not be used at all during Pesach.

In our household, removing chametz means getting out of our possession all flour, cereal, pasta, legumes, cookies, crackers, tofu and tofu products (soybeans are legumes!), rice and rice products, breads, brownie and pancake mixes, dry beans and peas, anything with corn sweeteners, baking powder, yeast, grain alcohol (not just the rum, the vanilla extract, too), popcorn, tortillas, and so on. It is a massive undertaking. We generally list all the food in the house and assign each item to one of the following categories:

Use up or discard

This is the first rough sort of the "use up or discard" pile. Things are here for a variety of reasons -- they are chametz (Oreos, oatmeal, Cheerios, Ritz crackers, Bisquick); they are not chametz but because the package is open we will not keep it over Pesach (taco shells); or, for whatever reason, we no longer want to give shelf space to these items. Most of these things will be given away to non-Jews who can use them and who don't care that the package is open or the expiration date on the can is a few months in the past.

Give away to a food pantry (applies almost exclusively to unopened packages of food)

Some of this food is definitely chametz, like the noodles. Some is kitniot, like the pinto beans. In both cases, these are unopened packages of food that have not passed their expiration date.

Sell for the duration of Pesach through a rabbinnical agreement called mechirat chametz.

Girl Scout cookies just arrived! No way am I going to give those to a food pantry, nor are we likely to eat them all in the next couple of weeks. Therefore, these cookies, along with a few other items will be put into our freezer or onto a special shelf and sold. The sale arrangements are generally made through our local rabbi, though there are a number of web sites where you can arrange for the sale of your chametz.

Girl Scout cookies are definitely chametz, but there are other food items that we will not be using during Pesach, but will sell and (if all goes as planned) buy back after Peach is over.

Most of these items are not chametz, but in order to be absolutely certain that there is not even the slightest bit of chametz that got mixed in during manufacturing, we tend to buy only items that are certified as kosher for passover or that are allowed to be used during Pesach without a specific kosher-for-passover certification. These food items will be stored through Pesach and used afterwards without problems.

As I said, we have only done a rough sort so far. There is still a mixture of items in all the food-storage places throughout the house. The refrigerator, for example:

Eggs are okay for Pesach, so any we don't use before then can be kept for use during Pesach. The open marinara sauce will probably get used up, but any that's left over will probably be tossed out. Salsa ... depends on how much is left. The wheat germ, however, is chametz and if we can't find someone who can use it, we will discard it. On the shelf shown on the right, the hamburger buns are use or lose. And the ice box cookie dough (wrapped up in waxed paper) will definitely be used before Pesach.

And this is how it goes all the way through the pantries and garage shelves and refrigerators and freezers and anywhere else we happen to store food. Top of the bookshelf in the back hall where we keep unopened bags of chips, anyone?

On a more spiritual note, chametz can also stand for other things in our lives that we would like to get rid of. Leaven symbolizes the impurity that causes grains to "puff up" and change. The removal of impurities in ourselves can keep us from "puffing up" and moving away from G-d.

And now for something completely different -- PURIM!

Updated with new links on March 17, 2010.

I got some pictures of our Purim festivities from a friend, so I'm taking a break from Pesach preparations to talk about Purim. Purim is one of the truly fun holidays in the Jewish calendar. You dress up in costumes, you give gifts of food (and sometimes receive them), you have a chance to do something nice for others in the form of tzedakah, and everybody acts just a little bit silly. Or a lot silly, depending on the circumstances.

Before we lived here in Galut, we lived in a small town with a large Jewish population. Purim was lots of fun. Kids got to see that adults can have fun, too! If that's the only lesson they learned from Purim, it was worth it in my book.

Unfortunately, while we belong to a synagogue here, the fun element has pretty much been missing from Purim. Last year, we tried Purim in another city, but that wasn't an option this year. So I talked it over with a few like-minded friends and we decided to have our own home-made Purim celebration.

There are four mitzvot (commandments) associated with Purim:
-- Listen to the megillah (scroll containing the story of Esther and Purim)
-- Have a festive meal (always a good one!)
-- Give gifts of food
-- Give gifts to the poor

How hard, we thought, can it be to do all of those things by ourselves?

Donations to a food pantry and/or a tzedakah fund took care of the last mitzvah. The third was accomplished as we made up special mishloach manot baskets for each other, as well as for other friends. The second was a no-brainer -- we had a potluck dinner as part of our celebration. The first -- the megillah reading -- was the one that took the most time and effort.

The megillah, the story of Esther, is traditionally read in Hebrew in a synagogue. However, because we had a number of children to entertain educate, we decided that it was important to tell the story in a language that they all understood. To make it fun, we decided to set it to music. To involve the kids, we asked them what musical they would like. Their answer was "Mamma Mia".

So in my copious spare time, I wrote a purimshpiel using tunes from "Mamma Mia". Here are some pictures to give you an idea of how things went (and of just how low-budget an operation this was):

Here the stage is set -- i.e., the furniture and cabinets were covered up with some batik fabric we just happened to have lying around and we created a sumptuous, if somewhat clashing, atmosphere for the King's banquet. The royal peacock is checking out the castle premises.

One of the families involved decorated the wine goblets for the feast and they are so gorgeous that I just have to share:

The text says every wine goblet was different, and our decorators took this to heart. Basically, those are just some cheap plastic goblets that they painted with gold paint and glued some "jewels" to. Simple, inexpensive, and totally beautiful.

We had a very small group of players available -- enough for King Ahashverosh, Mordechai, Esther, Haman, and a general dogsbody who played out almost all the bit parts. Our stage manager put on a second hat for a couple of scenes to help out. Also, one player wanted a very short role so she played the part of Vashti, who appears only in the first scene and then disappears. (Our Vashti actually moved to the audience where she got to handle a "spotlight" -- aka big flashlight -- in the second act.) And we had one other adult doing the reading from the megillah scroll itself, though one of the older kids could have managed that if necessary.

Our megillah scroll had the entire text in both Hebrew and English, but we read only selected bits of the megillah in English -- enough to move the story from one part to the next when we couldn't handle it in song.

Our King Ahashverosh was very regal, draped in gold sari fabric.

Mordechai and Esther were obviously from the same family -- they were both wearing pajamas!

Haman had the ear of the King:

Esther got to put on some bling:

And our man-of-all-other-parts read many edicts from the king:

We actually had him change hats for each "role" he played -- messenger, head of the harem, advisor, palace servant, Haman's wife, and so on.

This was one of our favorites:

This picture doesn't really do them justice, but our megillah reader is also a talented artist. She drew some pictures on poster board and made some collages to help us set the scenes -- King's room, Queen's rooms, street, palace gates, Haman's house, etc.

Here's a close-up of the street scene:

We got a karaoke tape (background music only) of the songs from "Mamma Mia" and I edited them using RealPlayer so that we had just the bits of the songs we needed. Then I loaded them on an iPod and wrote the music cues into the script. It was a low-budget operation, but a good time was had by all.

What was even better -- despite clamoring for dinner and other minor disasters, the kids actually got the story. They were singing songs on the way home (so I am told) and one remembered enough to be able to tell his teacher the next day that Haman picked the date for killing all the Jews by throwing dice. (I am still finding some of those dice under pieces of furniture, but that's another story.)

The updates I promised to make several weeks ago are finally done!

Pesach countdown -- 26 days to go

Today we dug out our boxes of haggadahs, the special books that are used during the seder. I knew exactly where the boxes were -- out in the garage behind a pile of boxes -- so it was just a matter of lifting and lugging. I wanted them available now because I am trying to put together our own haggadah this year. Usually, we use the Feast of Freedom haggadah from the Rabbinical Assembly, along with a special supplement that we have developed over the years to tell the actual story of Passover. (Which, by the way, does not show up in traditional haggadahs. Really.)

We bought Davka's Transliterated Haggadah last year after Pesach so that we could produce our own haggadah this year with the full traditional Hebrew text, along with transliteration for those who find it useful. But there's no translation on the disk, which is where the many haggadahs that we already own come in.

I'm also looking up some supplemental readings and things on the internet to see if I want to include any of that. So getting out these boxes and taking a look at the Davka program and doing some internet research was my main Pesach preparation for the day. (Yes, food is still sitting on the counters and the table. Don't nag. I'm getting to that. Just not tonight.)

Our Pesach cookbooks and recipes were also in the boxes with the haggadahs. Because we only use these recipes for 8 days a year, the cookbooks don't earn a primary (i.e., permanent) place on the cookbook shelf. Over the years, we have made a conscious effort to make our menus for Pesach different from our menus during the rest of the year. We look forward to these foods because we only make them during Pesach. And because we make these recipes so infrequently, I often write copious notes on the recipes. Like "don't make this again" or "very good, but reduce X ingredient."

I also keep the seder menu plans from year to year. I have seder plans from 20 years ago in this file. For some seders, we even did seating charts that usually made their way into the files. Today my daughter and I got a chuckle out of a seating plan for 2001, when we were trying to figure out how to fit 31 people, including a 2-day-old baby (and her mother) around our tables. Going through these files is like an archeological expedition into our Pesach celebrations over the last 20 to 25 years.

I started to look through recipes because one of our seder guests is already asking what she can bring. Do I look like I know what I'm going to feel like making for our first seder at the end of the month? I thought not.

Be that as it may, one more sort of Pesach-related activity took up a fair amount of time today. My Rosh Hodesh Group (more on that another day) is having a chocolate seder in a couple of weeks. The steering committee (me and my friend MS) and I met with our hostess this afternoon and did a quick walk-through to make sure that we have everything we need. When I finish the booklet for the Chocolate Seder, I will make it available here.

Pesach Countdown -- 27 Days to Go

I did not get as much done as I had planned today, but I did line a shelf in the garage with paper towels and put the Pesach food I have already bought onto the shelf.

We do not buy a tremendous amount of processed foods for Pesach -- this is about it. Some matzoh (though we will probably buy more before we are done), some matzoh meal and matzoh cake meal, tomato sauce, a few cans of olives and pickles, catsup, and wine and juice. We may get a few more items, but there's not much available here in Galut.

I ordered a few things from kosher.com's Passover store. And, in other years, we have ordered kosher-for-Passover wine from Kosher Wine's online store. We seem to have plenty of wine this year, however.

I also continued to sort the food I cleared out of the pantry and garage shelves yesterday. More for the food pantry, a few items to give away (open boxes of cereal that won't get used up, some sodas), more consideration of what meals we can prepare given the ingredients we have on hand. The dining table is almost usable.

Tomorrow I will try to tackle the refrigerators and freezers. Lots of food there, as well.

I have a couple of philosophical points to discuss here -- like why we sell food during Pesach, why we can't use last year's leftover matzoh, and what I used to call the Question of Max. Now that my beautiful Siberian Max is gone, I suppose it will have to be the Question of the Animals. But I'm way too tired to tackle any of that tonight.

If yesterday was Purim, then today must be....

.... time to get ready for Pesach (Passover).

It has been over 3 years since I tried to start this blog and a lot has happened. The big thing that impacts this blog about Living in Galut is that I finally figured out what it should be, as opposed to what I had in mind when I started out. Wow. Only took three years for that realization....

Back when I started, I thought this blog was going to be about the dissatisfactions of living away from the centers of Jewish life -- not only the one we left behind when the family relocated from Boston to Albuquerque, but also the ones I have since encountered in the Los Angeles area during my work with USY (United Synagogue Youth). In talking with other Jews who are isolated by geography or circumstances, it seems to me like the East and West coasts of the United States are teeming with Jewish life, or at least with Jewish choices, while -- with a few notable exceptions -- the vast middle area of the country is kind of lost. In Galut, so to speak.

Yes, there is a lot to complain about when you have experienced the richness of life in a vibrant Jewish community. But I have also found that there are things to celebrate, ways to continue living a Jewish life even when your community and your synagogue work against you. And it is these things that I want to write about. I can't promise that I will never whine and complain about how difficult it is to lead the kind of Jewish life that I want out here in the hinterlands. But I'll do my best to focus on ways to build community, to bring joy into your celebrations, and to do Jewish wherever you may find yourself

So today being, as I said before, the day after Purim, it is time to start thinking about Pesach. I wanted to start this renewed blog with Purim or maybe even Hanukka, but I found that I was so busy doing those holidays that I didn't have time to sit down and write about them. And writing about them after the fact seems kind of pointless. So, we'll start with Pesach, which is a very good place to start for a variety of reasons:

1) Pesach occurs in the first month of the year. "What?" I hear (or at least imagine) readers saying at this point. "Doesn't the year start with Rosh Hashanah?" Well, yes and no. But I'm not going to go into the various New Years in the Jewish calendar right now. Other people have already done that, so maybe another time.

2) Pesach commemorates the beginning of Jewish peoplehood. Before the Exodus from Egypt and the Giving of the Law at Mt. Sinai, the Hebrews were a tribe, a family group. After Mt. Sinai, Jews were a nation, a people. It is the events at Mt. Sinai that define who we are and that bind us together.

3) Pesach requires a fair amount of preparation, and therefore I think I have time to write about it as we go along. I may be fooling myself, but it's worth a shot.

Despite that long-winded introduction, it is still the day after Purim. So today I emptied my food cabinets.

I also emptied the storage shelves out in the garage where we store bulk buys and stuff like that. The kitchen is now totally unusable:

So is the dining table.

Not everyone starts this way, but I am a very visual person and it helps me to take everything out and look at it. At this point, I can start evaluating what we have and should use in meals before Pesach (just four short weeks away). I can also look at the impulse buys (10 boxes of Oreos for $10 seemed like a good idea at the time, as did those 10 boxes of Ghiardelli brownie mix) and wonder why in the world I thought that the four of us who are still living in this house would eat the same way as we did when there were two additional young adult men in the house.

Those who live here were invited to take responsibility for their own snacks, etc., and to put them back on the shelves, with the understanding that anything they didn't eat in the next four weeks would have to be moved and sold. They did so, with minor help from a shelf-liner inspecting friend:

So, some of the food will get used up in meals between now and Pesach. Some will be eaten and, if not finished, sold before Pesach. And what about the rest? (Like those Oreos and brownie mixes, and a wide variety of food left behind by college students after their winter break.) There is a third basic category in our rough sort, and that is food to be given to a food pantry. The pile is not yet complete, but here's the start:

So there you have it, the first day of my personal preparing for Pesach adventure. Let's see..... what shall we eat over the next few weeks? Lentils, barley, split green peas, pasta, rice......