The Zohar, Beshallah 60a, tells that when the Israelites were at the Yam Suf, they saw tremendously clear visions of God's presence. This is a theme which we find already in medrashim, which state that the statement זה אלי ואנוהו implies being able to point to a visual manifestation, and say "this!". In fact, there are even hints of this in the biblical text itself, which states וירא ישראל ... ויאמינו: "Then Israel saw ... and they believed."

The Zohar says that the Israelites did not want to leave the Yam Suf: ויסע משה את ישראל מים סוף -- "Moses forced Israel to leave the Yam Suf". Here, too, we find this idea already in medrashim. In the medrashim, the Israelites wanted to stay because of all the jewels and gold and silver, the ביזת הים, which had been washed up in the sea. They wanted to pick up cash from the ground. On the other hand, the Zohar says that they wanted to stay because of the spiritual experience of clear vision, אסתכלותא.

The Zohar continues: God said to Moses: "Tell them to move on." Moses told them to move on, but they refused to leave. So God said: "I must remove זיו יקרי, the sheen of my glory, from the sea, so that there will be nothing left here for which the Israelites will want to stay." He removed His glory, and moved it to the wilderness, where אתגלי ולא אתגלי, He was revealed, yet not revealed.

So Moses told the Israelites: "God's glory has left the sea; it is time to move on." Yet still, they did not want to move on, for this was the place where they had had such clear vision, and they wanted to savor the place.

So Moses pointed to the wilderness, and said: "Look -- see the cloud there? God is there now. He may not be revealed in such a clear way, for אתגלי ולא אתגלי, but that is where He is."

And finally, they moved on to the wilderness. And what are the next words in the verse? ויצאו אל מדבר שור -- "they went to the Wilderness of Shur." What is Shur? The Zohar explains: מאי שור? אסתכלותא. The word "shur" in Hebrew, as a verb, means "seeing". For here, too, they saw visions of God, albeit less clearly.

So -- here is my take on this:

For a whole week, we have had Pesah. We had sedarim and rituals at the beginning, and Hallel and leyning. Then we had hol ha-mo'ed, with its restrictions on melakha and prohibition of hametz, and we had Shir Hashirim (on Shabbes for Ashkenazim, on other days for other groups). We have had many piyyutim, and festive meals. Finally, on the seventh day, we have read the story of the splitting of the sea, and read the Song.

The song is over, but we still don't want to leave. We have had such a good Yom Tov. And in fact, in the diaspora, even after the Song, we still stay at the Sea another day. We don't want to leave.

But it's over. God isn't here any more. If we continue eating matza and avoiding hametz after the week is over, we accomplish nothing.

So, as Moses tells the people in the passage in the Zohar -- look, beyond Pesah, into the plain weekdays of Aumerzeit. There, we do not have such direct religious obligations, and אתגלי ולא אתגלי -- God is revealed, yet concealed. Revealed, but not revealed. Nonetheless, do not be scared to move on -- for now, God is there. The cloud is in the wilderness. It is time to leave the Sea.

Searching for chametz is about a billion gazillion times more fun when you have a dog.

She tries to eat the feather.

She tries to eat the flashlight.

She follows the flashlight beam, trying to figure out what is this moving thing with no smell.

You don't need to hide chametz to "find," because there are dog biskits and pieces of bread hiding all over the house.

Including real proper kezayit-sized lumps of bread, because when she's shut in my bedroom on shabbat (better a miffed dog in the bedroom than a freaked-out screaming toddler at lunch) she overturns her bowl in pique and throws the contents, including the challah-roll bribes, all over the place.

Anyway, you find the dog biskits and bits of bread; you poke them out from under the furniture with your feather along with quantities of crud and dust bunnies (because you are a soferet, you have plenty of large sturdy feathers); dog sniffs the mixed crud, identifies the bits which are chametz, and eats them, nom nom nom.

Famously, anything a dog won't eat isn't chametz, so the leftovers you can push back under the furniture and pretend they don't exist. Or sweep them up and throw them out, yeah, but halakha geekery wins and you know it.

When you aren't finding bits of chametz, she goes back to trying to eat the feather.

Except if you're lying full-length on the floor on your tummy trying to squint under the furniture, in which case she climbs on top of you and sits there proudly being all "this is a good place to sit! stay there! ooh, a dog biskit! don't mind if I do!"

peeps for passover - a construction after my own heart. If you liked the Lego Bible, you will probably like this.

Dammit! All year I've been saving the dried-up bits of my lulav, so as to have a lovely fire on which to burn chametz - because even if you toast the leftover bread it doesn't burn very well unless you have a good hot fire already, and bits of lulav make a nice fire once you get it going* - so I take my lulav and my dry bread and my metal bowl into the garden to make a fire, and what does it do? It snows. SNOWS. So I made some symbolic toast and came in.

Consider if you will that until quite recently, burning was a - perhaps "the" - significant method of waste disposal in the kitchen. People didn't have kitchen bins, they had fires. I forget who it is - it might have been Mrs Beeton - says that anyone ought to be able to dispose of anything they can't reuse or sell to the rag-and-bone merchant by burning (not in those exact words, obviously).

Burning is a lot more visceral than just dumping stuff into the rubbish chute, but if it's flippin' snowing out and your fire is being so smoky that you're scared the super will come out and yell at you, the rubbish chute accomplishes the same end.

* It's great - the little fragile bits you use to start it, and the long bits, you folded into sticks while they were still green and bendy, and bound them with chunks of the holderthing, so now they're quite significant sticks and they'll burn quite hot once they take hold.

But it's not the usual kind of Omer counter. No, with this counter you'll never forget to count the Omer again, because this one's got chocolate.

Reposting from last year, but this time, before Pesach!!! and with this year's omer-counting chart.

You will need: kosher-for-Pesach choccies, tissue paper, yarn, scissors, pen.*

Cut squares of tissue paper. I'm using purple over white here. Of course you could also use wrapping paper, fabric, foil, whatever takes your fancy.




Starting at the second seder, after dark each night, count the Omer (helpful chart) and eat your choccy.

And remember to brush your teeth before going to bed.

But it's not the usual kind of Omer counter. No, with this counter you'll never forget to count the Omer again, because this one's got chocolate.

You will need: kosher-for-Pesach choccies, tissue paper, yarn, scissors, pen.*

Cut squares of tissue paper. I'm using purple over white here. Of course you could also use wrapping paper, fabric, foil, whatever takes your fancy.




Starting at the second seder, after dark each night, count the Omer (helpful chart) and eat your choccy.

And remember to brush your teeth before going to bed.

There are many, many people in the world who are desperately poor and hungry for opportunities - to earn enough to stay alive, maybe to make better lives for themselves and their families. They are ideal fodder for exploitation by the profit-hungry. These are today's slaves. People held against their will, forced to work and paid nothing. It is estimated that there are 27 million slaves in the world today, created by population increases, migration patterns into cities, and governments who don't care.

People are lured away from their homes with promises of good jobs and education. Most of them end up in agriculture, mining, and prostitution - unpleasant, dangerous jobs that no-one wants to do. Poverty and lack of education make people easily exploited. Maybe they have no other skills, and maybe they don't have enough resources to pick up and go. And without education, they don't know where to go anyway: "we talk about it, leaving, but if we leave, where are we going to go, we don’t know anybody, so just have to, you know, just stay there."

Activists fight slavery by giving people the resources they need to be free. By giving them food, shelter and safety from angry slave owners. By creating a structure of sustainable freedom.

Slavery is illegal in almost all countries, but money is powerful. And we all benefit from slavery; we all like cheap goods, we all like a bargain. It's much easier to say "Oh, our government would never let that happen" than to think about where our Florida orange juice is coming from.

I don't have big plans for how to end slavery, but Free the Slaves does, as do various other organisations. And I figured if I can spend $20 on a Pesachdik hand blender, I really have no excuse for not spending somewhat more than that on a Pesachdik organisation. So I did.

What Pesach luxury did you buy this year, to celebrate your own freedom from slavery? And will you donate a comparable amount to helping someone else achieve theirs?

I think most of you will understand when I say:

A) Whee, spring cleaning!

B) MOAR ROACH TRAPS!

Courtesy of lethargic_man:



(cutting matzah. It's funny.)

My mouth hurts. A shard of matzah stabbed into the roof of it. Ow. Damn matzah.

Every year I think how nice soft matzah would be. Soft matzah is proper authentic unleavened bread; really matzah ought to be just pita bread, only generations of paranoia have turned it into something more resembling cardboard.* This too is part of the charm of the season - it's such fun to spend a week cleaning your house and then chow down on food that turns into a zillion crumbs as soon as look at it - but never before have I sustained actual physical injury from matzah, and the charm stops there.

So, by next year I am going to learn how to make soft matzah. I tried making pita once before, and it turned out like cardboard, so I've got some work to do there. First stop is going to be learning all those laws and things, and then working out how to make decent bread within those limits. Finding appropriate flour is also going to be a challenge (although I'm in New York City so it can't be that hard). I always thought plain old flour was in principle okay (not, you understand, that I have ever ever had plain old flour in my possession on Pesach; there is a difference between vaguely thinking something and actually doing it, and the difference is called checking up), but apparently commercial wheat gets soaked in water before grinding, which technically counts as leavening, so that's ordinary flour right out.

So: technique, laws, supplies, in the name of not going around with a perforated mouth.

* Since it's fairly easy to screw up and let it get leavened, and since that's really a massive huge no-no, the paranoia is to some extent justified.