Rabbi's Derasha

On the Halacha side, we like to give practical guidance.  We’ve spoken about restrictions on work during the afternoon on Erev Pesach, and about the amounts needed for Matza and wine at the Seder.  

This year I want to explain one of the most basic questions about Pesach, which is the nature of the prohibition on Chometz.  The practical question is one I get every year: When we are selling Chometz, what are we selling?  

There are two issues with Chometz on Pesach.  One is that you cannot eat it, and that applies to any amount.  There is no Bitul, no chance of nullification.  Even if it is a trace amount, 1 in a 1000, it is still not nullified.  

But there is another issue which is that it should not be found in one’s possession.  This means that we have to get rid of it -- consume it, burn it, or give it away.  But here there is an amount.  If it’s an olive’s worth, then If it’s something like beer or bread, that is easy enough.  That is 100% Chometz and one has transgressed the Torah prohibition if one is in one’s possession of an olive’s worth during Pesach.

But what about mixtures?  The obligation to get rid of them on Pesach is from the rabbis.  The amounts in these cases are slightly different.  If one has a total of an olive in a package of food which also has other ingredients, that still has to be disposed of -- consumed, burned, given away.  For example, a box of Cap’n Crunch cereal.  Most of such cereal is stuff most people would like to keep out of reach of children.  But there is Chometz in there, enough to qualify.  

But other products have less than an olive but still more than 1/60th, like the amount of malt in a cereal like Corn Flakes.  That is not considered Chometz Gamur, complete Chometz, but it still should be sold or disposed of in some way.  If the total amount is less than 1/60th, it is not even a problem of keeping it over Pesach.

One of the ways to get rid of Chometz is to sell it.  Once upon a time, the sale of Chometz was for distillers and others whose whole livelihoods depended on this.  That is why they sold it even though it was complete Chometz.  Some today still sell even complete Chometz like bread or crackers.  But some try to avoid selling complete Chometz, as their livelihood no longer depends on it.  They can still sell Chometz as a way of expressing their wish to be completely rid of it.  But they would be selling only that which is, like Corn Flakes, less than an olive but more than 1/60th of Chometz.   

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This is the first time we’ve gone into a major Chag since the catastrophe at the end of the last Chag.  The war is now more than six months old.  We do not know where it will end; war is unpredictable.  We do have a sense of a new reality that has taken hold.  Winter is a time of hibernation, of rumination.  Pesach is a time of Yetzia, and I want to try to articulate where we are.  

I was in Israel three weeks ago, with R’ Avi Stewart of the Westwood Kehilla.  On our trip, our first stop was a place called Shura, which is devoted to the Rabbanut of the army.  There is a warehouse there of all of the supplies the Rabbanut uses for soldiers -- Sukkot, Sifrei Torah, Megillot.  It is also the home of the Chevra Kaddisha for the army.  It was created for the army and not for civilians but it is the largest such facility in the country, so it was put to use for everyone after October 7th.  The facility was overwhelmed, as were those who worked there.  R’ Stewart, who is also a therapist, asked right away about therapeutic support for those who were working there.  There is such support but it still was overwhelming.  

There is a part of the facility made up of small buildings.  These are labeled, “Cheder Prayda,” the rooms for parting.  This is where family members say goodbye to their loved ones.  When we were there, they mentioned Hadas Lowenshtern, the widow of Elisha, HY”D, who was killed several weeks into the war. We sent out a clip of Hadas, which was made shortly after Shiva.  At the time, Yaakov Tuchman, who lived here for six years, sent me a message.  He wanted us to know that everything Hadas said in her video was true.  The Tuchmans and the Lowenshterns are neighbors in Harish.  He also sent a clip from the actual funeral.  Hadas had said then that her marriage to Elisha began with a Cheder Yechud (a room where she was alone with her husband), and ended with one at the Chevra Kaddisha.  

The next day, R’ Stewart and I went to see Hadas in Harish.  The meeting was set up by Ayelet Tuchman.  Hadas is exactly as she appears in the videos: A stark but smiling Aishet Chayal, a wife of a soldier and a woman of valor.  She has humor about her amidst the loss.  She used “Santa Claus” as a verb -- “they santa claus my kids,” she said as she described the way people send them toys.  And she bemoaned how much chocolate has been sent: “It’s bad enough that they are orphans but now they’ll have terrible teeth.” 

She also has the long view born of her Emuna [faith].  She considers her husband to have had a wonderful life because that’s the way he viewed it.  She has a sign on the front door that announces that this is a house of joy and that no one there should be seen as a Miskein (an unfortunate one).  She and Elisha decided together that he would serve despite having an exemption as a father of six children. That was because the exemption was just a government regulation and the obligation to serve under these circumstances -- a Milchemet Mitzva, a war that is commanded -- comes from the Torah.  Every war has what is called a Temunat Nitzachon, a picture of victory.  I told Hadas that she is the picture of victory because of her faith and her spirit.   

The army has names for all of the wars and operations.  This war is called Charbot Barzel, swords of iron.  Some call it the Simchat Torah War.  Its element of surprise made it a continuation of the Yom Kippur war in the eyes of its perpetrators.  

But it began on Shemini Atzeret, which has Simchat Torah on it during the first day if one lives in Israel.  But it’s also the day, all over the world, that we begin to say Mashiv HaRuach. Those words mark the power of Hashem to make “the winds blow,” which goes with rain storms.  But it also means to restore or return the spirit.  As we have seen all over the world, there has been a revival of spirit.  

An Israeli author named Omer Barak wrote after the war began that he went to sleep on October 6th as an Israeli and he woke up the next day as a Jew.  A few people made these types of statements but they usually were referring to the fact that Pogroms were a part of the Galut and not part of Israel.  The state was supposed to end Pogroms but here we are again.  

Omer meant it in a different way.  He had never thought of "Jew" as applying to him.  He didn’t even have it in his Teudat Zehut [identification card].  He thought it simply didn’t apply.  He is ashamed of this now.  He knows now that he is part of a long history, a history that predates the state by millenia.  It is a history of a promise that was made to the Jews almost 4000 years ago, when Hashem made a Bris, a promise, to Avraham Avinu.  That is the promise we invoke at the Seder when we say “V’hee She’amda.”  He knows now that what it means to be Jewish is to be a target whether you know what they are talking about or not.  And he knows that it means to look deeply into sources and to find oneself in a family that relates to Hashem.  If you’re going to be blamed, you might as well know why.

The turn in anti-Semitism has been remarkable. I have mentioned here that I tell potential converts about the inevitability for this kind of change even for American Jews but I never had any idea of what it would look like.  I understand if people don’t like a particular government of Israel.  Israelis too can be in that camp.  But if you told me that people’s brains would be so scrambled by ideology that they would side with Hamas, I would have wondered what you were smoking. This is a clarifying moment, a moment when being on the other side means identifying with a death cult.  

But this shift has reminded us of another reality.  I too believe that the war should have a name like the Shemini Atzeret War.  Not because of Mashiv HaRuach, but because of the Chag itself.  The Midrash says that Shemini Atzeret is the Chag which we spend alone together with Hashem.  Sukkot has involvement with the non-Jewish world but Shemini Atzeret is just us and Hashem.  The Zionist ideal for 140 years has been independence.  That’s usually understood as Israel’s right to defend itself by itself.  No more dependence on the fickle nations.  The war has raised this issue and also reminded us -- as recently as last Motzai Shabbat -- that this ideal has not yet come to be. 

But the isolation we feel also goes with Shemini Atzeret.  We have allies, many of them.  I run into them in the street and in the market.  That support is gratifying but the overarching message is that this is a time to return to our direct relationship to Hashem.  We end the Seder with songs and then with the Song of Songs. That is the story of our intimate relationship with Hashem.  This is why Jews picked themselves up and moved on after catastrophe, because the relationship between Hashem and the Jews never ends.  

Pesach is only about thank you.  We do not think about the future.  We might peep ahead to the giving of the Torah but we do not think about Eretz Yisrael, which is the end of the journey.  That would distort our thanks.  It is not about the end result; it is about the ability to focus on what He has done for us now.  He chose us and he marched us out of Egypt.  We continue that march, even if it is alone with Hashem.