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......