Pesach cleaning, the new chapter

One week before Purim, I was already taking about what it is to happen next. Two days after, I visited some of my heimishe friends and they were already done 25% of the cleaning. More than one week after Purim, I am here writing a post about Pesach cleaning, but don't have a plan to cope with the challenge. 

To be very honest, I am not as spontaneous as I want to look like. Ten days ago when I was trying to find something fast to cook, I mapped the dangerous corners of the kitchen where most likely chometz is comfortably hiding. I can see often myself starting a huge cleaning process, when everyone in the house is doing its job properly, without any protests against the assigned task. Even if some are faster, they offer to do my part. 

The tragi-comic part of the story is that we don't even know exactly where we will spend Pesach, and I am fighting the terrible feeling that I will need to take care of cleaning another house besides mine, in case that we want to backpack and go in another sunnier place. 

What I know for sure is that I want to enjoy the mitzva of Pesach cleaning. Most probably will listen to some shiurim or hazzanut when cleaning. I will find the most creative recipes for the time of the matzot and will try to learn as much as possible about the holiday. As I am the kind of person that is doing the best job when coping with stress, the proper cleaning will be done 10 days before Pesach, regardless of where we will decide to spend the 2 seder. 

I don't to hear anyone complaining about how hard is to eat matzot and we will find the best ways to embelish the mitzvot with new and nice tablecloth, songs and new yidden that we plan to meet. As usual, we have special savings that will help us, iy''H, to have the best on our table, both spiritually and physically. 

We all have been on Sinai so we better open our doors and hearts for being really free. When your heart is happy with the mitzvot, you are free and happy, even when all you have is a small piece of matza. 

Ready for Pesach? For Freedom?

What you can do in the days before being freed? Doing your best to deserve your freedom. From this point of view, cleaning means more than vacuuming and washing; it means as well reorganizing your priorities, thinking bolder to the future and finding time for thinking about the story of the Haggada - including the newest version, by JSFoer.

I found interesting this minhag of the Syrian Jews, according to this feature report:

Syrians — like Egyptians and other Jews who hail from Arab lands — will wrap the matzo in a cloth, sometimes resembling a knapsack. The Syrian tradition — at least in her family — is for each male, from oldest to youngest, to take the covered ceremonial matzo, hold it over his left shoulder and respond to three questions: What are you carrying? Matzo. Where are you coming from? Egypt. Where are you going? Israel.

At the practical level, I am trying to do my best for covering all those aspects. I am not always very successful, but at least I am learning more and more each day. Out of my working program, I put aside some time for reading about the traditions, cleaning some strange corners of the house and learning something insightful. Blogging is not necessarily part of the plan, but will try to update my online thinking diary as often as possible in the next days. 

Pessach cleaning

is not easy. At least if it doesn't start right now...