Pesach Prep 5785 Begins!

Ready for Pesach?  If you're thinking "Pesach is coming when the winds finally die down" - nope, this is New Mexico, and the winds are still blowing. But Purim has come and gone, so it must be time to get ready for Pesach!

Here are a few ways we prepare for Pesach:

1.  We set the clocks forward one hour, so we can start the Seder even later than ... we used to in the good ol' days, when there was at least a chance that Daylight Saving Time wouldn't begin until after Pesach.

2.  We wake up on Shushan Purim (or the day after) with a terrible headache.

3.  We report the first Albuquerque sighting of Pesach food. This year, it was Rabbi Emeritus Arthur Flicker of Congregation B'nai Israel who reported on March 14 that the Mother Lode of Passover Food has begun to congregate at the Smith's at Constituion and Carlisle.

So far, these Pesachdik items have shown up:

Pickles, Sardines, Tuna, Beets, Chicken Soup Mix, Matzah Ball Mix, Cake Meal, Matzah Meal, Potato Starch, Strawberry Preserves, Apricot Preserves, Raspbery Preserves, Ketchup, Salad Dressing, Borscht, Gefilte Fish, Honey, Egg Matzah, Shmurah Matzah, Manischewitz Matzah.

4.  And - the best sign that Pesach is coming?  It's when we get Mesifta Beth Shraga's Bedikas Chametz Kit in the mail!

What, you may ask, is a Bedikas Chometz (Search for Chometz) Kit?

Well.  First - you do know that all chometz (food products that just might contain even a smidgen of leaven or leavened bread) must be removed from your house and / or no longer owned by you, right?

So, after all the cleaning with blunt instruments has been completed, the night before the first Seder we get down to tachlis.  What do we need?

1. A candle - so we can see into every nook and cranny to make sure there's no chometz there.
2. A feather - so we can reach into every nook and cranny and eradicate any chometz.
3. A wooden spoon - so we've got something with which we can transfer the chometz we find.
4. A burnable bag -  so we've got something into which we can place the chometz we find before burning said chometz and bag the next morning.
5. A petek - with the right legal formulae (let's not call them prayers) to absolve us of all guilty ownership of any chometz we didn't see.

Viola!  Or another stringed instrument!  Here's your Bedikas Chometz Kit!

The petek traditionally has a couple slightly different versions of the statement

All chametz, leaven and leavened bread, that is in my possession which I have not seen, removed, or is unknown to me, should be annulled and considered ownerless like the dust of the earth.

Homemaker's Hint:  If you believe what you're saying - and you should - your efforts to clean the house before Pesach need not go beyond the reasonable and customary!

Which is to say, you don't have to drive yourself crazy.  Abq Jew knows - for some of us, we don't have to drive.  We can walk!   It's not that far ....