Ok, Ok, Passover is NOT Spring Cleaning

My last blog WAS tongue in cheek :-) Every year I try to see how much less I can get away with. I don't do spring cleaning before Passover. I do my best to sleep every night, and contrary to most people, I actually love it when the first night falls on Saturday night. Why, you ask? Let me count the ways.

1. A decent night's sleep -- most years, the night before the first seder I am up until 1 or 2 am, sometimes cleaning, but usually cooking. This year, Friday night will give me a decent night's sleep.
2. Three day Holiday -- Even though this is a three day holiday, and I usually dread them, the Sabbath lunch meal is fairly small, and simple cutting preparation to a minimum
3. Nap -- the day before Passover I am usually on my feet from 7am until the seder starts. On Saturday, I get to take my only nap of the week. When the first seder starts Saturday night, I can't cook on the Sabbath, and I get a nap before the first seder. It's like being a kid again.
4. Sleep -- if you begin to sense a theme, you are absolutely right. I get lots of sleep, all the other years I get almost none. I am a happier, calmer, more relaxed person when I get enough sleep and don't feel stressed. It's a wonderful life!

I actually like Passover once it starts. Life is simpler, the seders are fun, cooking is a challenge, which makes it interesting, and there are fewer outside distractions. The holiday has familiar rituals and music, significant memories and meanings, and to all my friends who will be celebrating, have a Hag Kasher v'Sameach. Have a Happy Passover.

Passover -- or is Judaism really anti-female?

I honestly don't believe that Judaism is anti-women. Many, maybe most Orthodox Jewish women have come to terms with where they fit in the religion, their role, and their relationship with halacha (law) and Hashem (G-d). Except when it comes to Passover!

This holiday, its requirements and its stringencies, was truly created by someone who had it in for women. With tongue in cheek, look at the list below:

• Have you cleaned every inch of your house? Many of us say we won't, most of us do.
• Is that a bread crumb behind the refrigerator? Better move it out to check. Forget that nothing from Passover is going to go behind the refrigerator, you might own bread products on Passover!
• Have you checked all the ingredients in your shampoos, soaps, lotions, makeup, etc. to make sure there is not a hint of any wheat or grain, or wheat by-products?
• Have you scrubbed your floors, and then scrubbed them again?
• Have you checked under your sofa cushions? Behind your bookshelves? Inside the pages of the history book you haven't looked at since college? There might be a grain of wheat.
• Have you scrubbed all your baby's toys, and then scrubbed them again, then again, because each time you clean one he makes it dirty again?
• Have you gone through your car with a fine toothed comb, digging M&Ms out of the cushions, picking wrappers out from under the seats, and vacuuming till within an inch of its life?
• Have you locked away all your regular pots and pans, dishes and glasses, forks and knives, and every utensil you use the rest of the year?
• Have you covered your impeccably scrubbed counter tops with aluminum foil or heavy plastic, poured boiling water over every corner of your scrupulously clean stainless steel sink, and scrubbed the inside and outside of your refrigerator and freezer, and any cabinets you plan to use until they shine?
• Have you run your self-cleaning oven, scrubbed the bottom, sides, top, and shelves, and then run it again?
• Have you turned on your burners without a pot on top and let them burn (gas or electric) for what seems like forever while your house slowly heats up and the knobs start to melt?
• Have you dragged out your Passover pots and pans, dishes and glasses, forks and knives, and every utensil you will need to cook for the entire week of Passover plus a few days of preparation?
• Have you spent several hours searching your house by candlelight to see if you missed anything?
• Have you taken what you didn't missed, wrapped it in a rag and burned it with the appropriate prayers?

And finally,

• Have you watched your husband spend a few hours cleaning his car and the drawer beside his bed, and then sit down in the living room with the Sunday paper?

Truly, this is not a holiday loved by women -- at least not before it starts!