Dark days

I am sitting in a dark apartment. The only light on is the blue glow coming from my computer screen. I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I'm sitting in obscurity because if the lights were on, I'd see the toys, clothes, and books scattered all over the living room floor. If my home were illuminated, I would have to face the black beans and rice sprinkled on my kitchen floor, or the stack of folded laundry needing to be repatriated to its drawers. If I turn on a light, I have to face my failures as a stay-at-home mom. That would be far more painful than the eye strain.

To worsen matters, Purim is over, and as any Jew knows, that can mean only one thing: Passover cleaning. The real reason we drink on Purim has little to do with any commandments regarding good and evil. No one wants face the task at hand with a clear head.

To the uninitiated, Passover is the commemoration of the Redemption of the Israelites after centuries of slavery in Egypt. The celebration lasts eight days, during which, Jews refrain from eating leavened foods, and perform the ritual feast of the "seder", which incorporates symbolic foods into a retelling of the story of the Exodus of the people of Israel. It is a festive meal, often lasting late into the evening, or wee hours of morning, as families read, eat, sing, and pray together.

If only it were so beautiful, meaningful, and simple. The behind-the-scenes insanity that goes into pulling off a Passover celebration that appears to be beautiful, meaningful, and simple, is nothing short of social psychosis. I have heard Passover cleaning described as "Spring Cleaning on steroids". Rabbis, for decades, have admonished Jewish women to relax. "Remember," they have advised, generation after generation, "dust is not chametz".

Chametz is not a word you hear everyday. In fact, in Jewish communities it is essentially forbidden to utter it until after Purim. The very sound of the word turns relatively calm, stable, and put-together women into ashen paranoiacs, stuttering, shaking, and looking rather unsettled. Chametz is a Hebrew word that means leavened food, or food that contains leavening. Leavening can include yeast, baking powder, or any other substance that causes foods to ferment and rise. Breads, muffins, cookies, and cakes are obvious examples. Others are more surprising, for example, children's molding clay.

Hey, who hasn't taken a nibble as a kid?

Cleaning for Passover doesn't just mean ridding your kitchen of the offending items. If you have children, it means trying to imagine how many nooks and crannies a child can reach and hide the uneaten half of their peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I know of women who turn out all pockets, search under mattresses, in books, behind books, in drawers, and under sofas, armed to the teeth with vacuum cleaner attachments. I know one woman who starts with her upstairs months before Passover is an inkling, and seals off the bedrooms as No Chametz Zones, before any other reasonable human being is even ready to utter the dreaded word.

But that's just the start. Getting rid of the chametz is only half the battle. Many women follow that up with professional carpet, drapery, and sofa cleaning. Once the rest of the house is cleaned, it's time to take on the kitchen. After snapping on the heavy-duty rubber gloves, the typical orthodox Jewish woman attacks her kitchen with a viciousness usually reserved for pedophiles and anti-Semites. Every surface is scrubbed, from floor to ceiling. All dishes, pots, pans, and cookware deemed non-suitable for Passover use are boxed up or sealed away in a designated chametz cupboard. Surfaces that can be used uncovered get a dousing in boiling water. All other surfaces are covered, often in ingenious ways: heavy duty aluminum foil, heavy duty plastic sheets, or my personal favorite, sheets of linoleum. These coverings are taped down with industrial strength tape.

And we're just getting warmed up.

Ovens are thoroughly cleaned, and then put on self-cleaning mode. If your oven isn't self-cleaning, it is blow-torched. The contents of the refrigerator and freezer are removed, and the insides of the appliances are scrubbed clean. Some women go as far as cleaning under and behind the refrigerators and ovens. I once caught my parents removing the oven door to clean out the gunk in the hinges, and they're not that observant! People do not act in rational ways during Passover.

The growing trend of people sealing off their homes and going on Kosher-for-Passover vacations is not surprising. I suspect if polled, most women would gladly abandon ship and let someone else sweat the details. Lest you think this is evidence of some horrible patriarchal society where women are some helpless victims, let me clear up this little misunderstanding. Women are not the victims, but the victimizers. In Israel, one of the great Rabbis, hoping to ease the pressure, reminded women that Passover was a time to celebrate freedom, not to commit themselves to servitude. Did the women rise up and cheer this Rabbi as their modern day Moses, liberating them from their hated tasks?

The poor, well-meaning man was taken to task by the very women who cursed and cried every year when faced with their annual Mission Impossible.

One of the songs we sing each year is roughly translated as: "We were slaves to the Pharoah in Egypt." Children throughout Israel have altered the words to sing, "We were slaves to Mom in the kitchen." Before anyone harshly judges Jewish men as the perpetrators of this cruel labor, consider the fate of many a pitiable husband who has been conscripted into his wife's Passover army, moving heavy furniture and appliances, scrubbing oven racks with steal wool and caustic cleaners, and treading lightly as his sweet, gentle wife is transformed into a raving lunatic armed with a spray bottle and scrubby sponge.

So here I sit, on the verge of a panic attack, with the lights off, in a complete state of denial. My husband is still recovering from his succession of illnesses, and Spring Break is days away. He is reasonably expecting to make up this lost week of reading and assignments, and in my heart I really want to believe that I will let him go to the library each day of his break to work undisturbed. But Passover is weeks away. And the terror is beginning to descend over me.

It's best to keep the lights off for now.