Housekeeping Motivation 2/2: A Passover Cleaning Question

The intellectual part

Part Two: A Passover Cleaning Question

For Spanish Speakers: Disfrute leyendo sobre la motivación para la limpieza y por qué limpiamos para Pesaj. La traducción al español está en los comentarios. ¡Reenviar a cualquiera que hable español que pueda disfrutar

Continued from Part 1:

Housekeeping Motivation 1/2: Inspirational Passover Cleaning Schedule

You may be wondering why I am working so hard to clean my home for Passover, when I would rather be writing. How is cleaning for Passover different from spring cleaning? The answer: Leaven. Please refer to the meme below, which will help you appreciate how scary leaven can be.

 What do Jews worry about before Passover? Not one second is spent worrying about  Pharaoh or the Egyptians, who once enslaved us. After all, we have Passover because G-d got rid of them for us, when we left Egypt.  Pharaoh was the villain in Egypt, and he claimed to be a god and to be able to control the flow of the Nile, and he was pretty scary back then, but now Pharaohs are only found as mummies. Unlike leaven, which must be completely eradicated from our lives, and messes up our homes. 

This is because leaven is the Big Bad of Passover in our times.  Leaven is loathsome, abhorrent, lousy, and atrocious, and forbidden on Passover. (9) 

What is leaven, anyway?

Leaven may be defined as "the resultant product of the fermentation of one of the five grains: wheat, barley, rye, spelt, and oats, after its combination with water."(9) The tiniest bit is forbidden to own, benefit from, or eat.  If you find it in your possession on Passover, you need to utterly destroy it. For dramatic effect, throwing it into an erupting volcano is preferred, but setting it on fire or dissolving it in acid or flushing it down the toilet also works. 

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 The extreme nature of the prohibition against leaven may seem a bit over the top. On Hanukkah, you  light  Hanukkah candles, but you're still allowed to turn the lights on in your house! When you live in a Sukkah-hut on Sukkot, houses are not forbidden. Why is getting rid of every last crumb of leaven such a big deal for Passover?  Just eat Matzah! 

 Passover has plenty of other themes. There's the ten plagues, spiritual and physical freedom from slavery, G-d saving Jews from anti-Semitism in every generation, and four cups of wine. There's a fifteen part ritual, called the Seder, that keeps the entire family awake until after midnight.  

The Bible (1) tells us that the dough didn’t have time to rise because they were rushed out of Egypt, so they took with them Matzah instead. So why didn't G-d just command everyone to eat Matzah? How did this turn into an  intense obsession with cleaning? Why? Why?

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Passover is all about questions, of course. There are even four official questions, which boil down to one: Why is this night different than all other nights? As Jews, we trust that the G-d Who took us out of Egypt has reasons for the commandments, and will eventually reveal them to us. (3)

According to the mystical explanation, the reason the Jews had to go through the slavery in Egypt was to rectify the very first sin: eating from The Tree of Knowledge Of Good And Evil in the Garden of Eden. (2)

The evil that was in that tree was leaven. 

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Leaven represents all evil. Firstly, leaven makes dough rise, which represents haughtiness. A haughty person is “puffed up”. Secondly, leavened dough tastes better, which represents lust.  Haughtiness and lust are the root of all evil.  (The desire for money falls under both categories, because it gives one access to buying what one desires, and it often gives honor and power as well.)

You may be a bit puzzled by this, as you are a direct descendant of Adam and Eve yourself. How could that possibly have been the fault of the Jews! The Jews weren't even around back then! 

Adam's soul had all the souls of all future human males in it, while Eve’s had all future human females. (2) If they had not sinned, they would have been able to rectify all of creation with all the souls that would ever be born. Therefore, it would have been unnecessary to give birth to many generations. After the sin, the souls broke into pieces, each with a different root, and each soul must repair its root since that episode. 

So while each person in the world has not personally done the sin, every human had a soul that had actually been inside of Adam and taken part in that sin. Therefore, every human is affected by their sin. 

(Disclaimer:  Isha Yiras Hashem is not a mystic. My mentor taught me this and gave me the sources you see below.)

Freedom is the thing Passover is most about. And the greatest freedom, for all humans, is the freedom to control oneself, which means being free of the evil inclination, which means humanity reverting to the way things were before the first sin, which led them to know evil. The mystics explain that, when the Jews became Jewish, they became the agents to rectify Adam and Eve's sin.  All people must be good, and all good people will receive reward in the world to come, but the Jews additionally took upon themselves to be G-d’s people, and to do that, they had to atone for that sin. (4)

The evil that was in the forbidden tree, the tree of knowledge of good and evil, caused all the evil that later existed within people, and made them inclined to do evil, and eventually caused their deaths. The Exodus was the beginning of this spiritual process. (4)

That bite of the fruit was spiritual poison for all humanity. The leaven represents that evil, because all evil stems from either haughtiness or lust. Leaven causes the dough to rise which represents the human attribute of haughtiness, and makes it taste better, which represents lust.(5)

Jewish mystics also consider this atonement the reason why the Jews were rushed out of Egypt, not even waiting for their dough to rise. As soon as Adam and Eve ate from the tree, G-d swiftly evicted Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. When telling us this, the Bible uses the word "garesh", to chase out. The Hebrew word in the Bible, "garesh", means to chase away. (7)

 When telling us that the Jews were quickly evicted from Egypt and could let their dough rise, the same word, "garesh", is used again. This tells us that just as Adam and Eve were quickly forced to leave from the Garden of Eden after the original sin, the Jews were rapidly evicted from the living hell of Egypt. When the atonement of the original sin is completed, G-d will not leave any person suffering for even one extra moment. (6)

If leaven is so very bad, why is it permitted the rest of the year? This is because, as we said, Adam and Eve should not have eaten of the Tree.  But once physical desires entered the human body they are not totally forbidden; they simply need to be controlled.  (6)

Only on Passover are we required to rectify the sin by in this way.   After that, leaven is permitted, because we no longer live in the Garden of Eden. In our imperfect world, it is enough to properly use the physical lusts, not allowing them to get out of hand.   

How could something be both poison and permitted?

Think of coffee. Caffeine is actually poison to the heart.  The reason most people can tolerate caffeine is because their liver cleans out the dangerous parts.  If someone did not have a liver, they would not be allowed the tiniest bit of caffeine.  However, when the person's liver is functioning normally, caffeine is controlled and so it permitted. 

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The allegory isn't perfect, but the idea is, that Passover represents the time when we must rectify the sin of eating of the Tree.  It's like the liver isn't working yet.  The Bible here works like the liver, making it possible to have physical desires and use them in the right way, clearing the poison part.

But sadly, evil still exists. And every year on Passover,  that  incomplete atonement continues, symbolized by  Jewish people not eating leaven on Passover and having Matzah. The mystics tell us that when Adam and Eve's sin is rectified, death will disappear and we will have the revival of the dead. When evil and death disappears, "dry bones will rise again". That is why we read about the revival of the dead in the book of Ezekiel on Passover. (8)

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Notes: 

(*)Thank you to my mentor, Rebbetzin Devorah Fastag, for teaching me so much of this. Much of these footnotes were written by her, and the rest based on her teachings.

Many thanks to the Housekeeping Motivation group for the inspiration they have provided so far, and for motivating me to clean my house.

(1) Exodus 12: 34, 39

(2) Me’or V’shemesh on Parshas Ki Tisa (Page 240, Edition Jerusalem 5746): “For Adam the first man was the all-inclusive soul of all the souls, and in him were the souls that would in the future come into the world…and this is what the Holy One Blessed is He said to Job (Iyov in Hebrew): ‘Where were you when I founded the earth?’ meaning, where were you in Adam, the first man? So it is (taught) in Midrash Rabba on Parshas Ki Tisa…”

He goes on to explain that Adam, as the first man, was the source of all the souls, and if he had not sinned, he alone would have been able to rectify all of creation, with all the souls that were in him. Therefore, it would have been unnecessary to give birth to many generations. “But when he sinned and there was breaking and falling for the souls in his sin, therefore it became necessary to give birth to many generations, that is, those souls who were within Adam the first man, in order that each soul repair its root in that part from whence it was at that time in Adam the first man”. 

(3) See Rashi on Song of Songs 1:2 “…and He (G-d) will appear over us again and will reveal to us the reasons behind the mitzvos and the secrets of its’ (the Torah’s) hidden mysteries.  

 ⁽⁴⁾ This is brought in many places including Sfas Emes 5651 “…and because of this, the children of Israel had to be in the iron refinery which is Egypt to sift out the bad from the knowledge [that was in the tree of knowledge]. 

Sfas Emes, Pesach Haggadah, P. 99: “The holy Zohar writes that Matzah is food which cures. Because through Adam's sin of eating of the Tree of Knowledge, good and bad became mixed in all things and also in the lower soul of a human being, and so one is forced to rectify that part which attached itself to oneself from this mixture [of good and evil] as it is written in the book Shar HaKdusha of Rabbi Chaim Vital, look there.

[Rabbi Chaim Vital was the main student of the Ari z"l and passed on his teachings.) And that [i.e. the bad that was in the Tree of Knowledge] is the yeast which is in the dough, and from that comes out the entire exile...This idea is brought in many other places as well, such as Bnei Yisaschar on Purim.

(5) The main point of the exodus was to bring redemption to the entire world. Sfas Emes on Pesach 5646, p.141. 

(6) https://ohr.edu/7806

“Every place into which he brought leaven — The Alshich explains that these places represent the areas that where one struggles with most in his battle with the evil inclination. There are many body parts a person can sin with. The eyes can see inappropriate things, the ears can listen to lashon hara, the mouth can eat non-kosher food, the feet can run to do bad, etc. However, not every person sins with all of his body parts. Therefore,… we are required to search out only the parts in which we brought in leaven, i.e. the body parts that don’t have a clean track record. The places where one is not prone to sin do not have to be searched, as the Mishna says: Any place that one did not bring leaven into doesn’t need to be searched.”

(7) Genesis 3:24

(8) https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/281644/jewish/Jewish-Resurrection-of-the-Dead.htm

“The body returns to the earth, dust to dust, but the soul returns to G-d who gave it. This doctrine of the immortality of the soul is affirmed not only by Judaism and other religions, but by many secular philosophers as well. Judaism, however, also believes in the eventual resurrection of the body, which will be reunited with the soul at a later time on a "great and awesome day of the Lord." The human form of the righteous men of all ages, buried and long since decomposed, will be resurrected at G-d's will. “

(9) https://ohr.edu/holidays/pesach/laws_and_customs/3468

"And that is why the entire year we eat [both] leaven and matzo, for we need to eat leaven in order to separate this mixture [i.e. we need to eat leaven during the year in order to separate the good from the bad.]  And that is why she (Eve) said "he (the snake) talked me into it and I ate- [which in Hebrew can be read as I will eat]" - for she understood that this mixture had already happened, and that it is always necessary to eat leaven in order to separate the mixture. [i.e. Eve was saying that, now I must continue to eat of the leaven which was in the Tree of Knowledge, in order to separate the bad part from the good part, and so rectify the harm that was done.] But temporarily G-d made a miracle in Egypt that their dough did not become leaven. He nullified this mixture [of good and evil] and fed us unleavebed bread, which is a simple food that hasn't changed.  Leaven makes it change.  

(10) As seen in the book, the Moon's Lost Light, by Rebbetzin Devorah Fastag: Meor Vishemesh says simply that the souls were in Adam, but the name Adam was inclusive of both Adam and Eve; see Genesis 5:2.

Thank you to my mentor, Rebbetzin Devorah Fastag, for all your teaching and wisdom, and for providing sources and feedback.