(no subject)

At this time of year, rabbis start telling people that they don't have to drive themselves nuts cleaning for Pesach. You don't actually need to spend every day for a whole week getting every speck of dirt out of your house; the idea is to remove leaven, and grime is not the same thing as leaven. Still, we persist in driving ourselves nuts nonetheless, staying up till the small hours washing all the dishes, going through all the drawers, cleaning under the bath, and so on. And this year I realised why. It's because Pesach is a time for family, which invariably means HOSTING THE IN-LAWS. Who else would check to see if the tops of the cupboards were clean, eh?