We can grow from the Passover experience if we
spring-clean our souls as well as our homes.
By Judy Gruen
More than 3,300 years ago, God swept the Jewish people out from our
slavery in Egypt, where we had toiled for more than 400 years. He
did not wait for a United Nations resolution on the matter -- the
Almighty acted unilaterally, and for this, we Jews remain forever
grateful.
Remembering the Exodus from Egypt is central to Jewish life -- so
central, in fact, that we mention it in our prayers every single
day. But why is it that this holiday, which celebrates liberation
from slavery, involves so much physical labor? Many Jews,
particularly the Orthodox, devote weeks to arduous cleaning of
every nook and cranny of the house. This is because during
Passover, Jews may not eat, own or even benefit from leavened
products, such as bread, crackers, pasta and a whole host of other
things, too.
In the Haggadah, our Passover playbook that recounts the history of
the Exodus, it states that God took us out of Egypt "with a mighty
hand and an outstretched arm." These are appropriate images to keep
in mind since preparing for Passover requires both a mighty hand
(two would be better) and an outstretched arm to get to those
hard-to-reach crevices behind the couch where your kid stashed a
packet of Oreos a few months back. Those who work so hard to clean
their homes of any chametz (leavened products) may sit down at
their seders exhausted, but with the satisfaction of knowing that
their homes are truly kosher for Passover.
Still, why can't Jews just commemorate our liberation with some
traditional Jewish comfort food, like chicken chow mein? Why does
scrubbing down the house and eating hard, crummy matzah, which
tastes stale even when it's fresh, remind us of freedom?
The answer is that freedom is more than just a physical reality;
it's a spiritual condition. And without a structure to our lives,
we have no freedom; we have only chaos. Gravity works much the same
way: Without gravity, everything and every one of us would just
float up into the atmosphere, hither and thither. Similarly, our
value system is our "spiritual gravity" -- it's the structure that
keeps us morally grounded. It gives us enough space to grow but not
so much space that we'll just float around aimlessly, experimenting
with potentially disastrous lifestyle ideas.