Mah Nishtanah

[onionsoupmix]

Tatte, I want to ask you the four questions...

The first question is why on all the other nights of the year, our house looks normal, but today the kitchen looks like an alien spaceship has landed, has landed.

The second question is why on all the other nights of the year, we eat normal vegetables and fruit but tonight mommy has peeled the

Comments

[aunt_becca]

what do you mean "gobbling matzah from plastic bags?" Is this a new way to prevent crumbs or something?

[onionsoupmix]

yeah, you are supposed to eat the matza into a plastic bag that you hold up to your face. So that crumbs won't get on the table or floor where they could become chometz

[oneironstring]

Why would they become chametz from falling on the floor . . . . . ???

I'm confused.

I don't do the crazy stuff anymore. I know some won't eat at my house but I figure it's a great way to weed out the loonies. I'm trying very hard to cultivate a more normative Judaism.

It isn't easy but I have to do it for my children.

[onionsoupmix]

Water will spill on them, you silly. And then the dough in the matzah will rise.

Also, tell me how you are cultivating a more normal Judaism! I am desperate here.

[oneironstring]

That's not possible. 1. the matzah has already been baked, and 2. there needs to be yeast for the dough to rise. Unless you happen to grow yeast cultures under your table, all you'll get are wet matzah crumbs.

G*3

[onionsoupmix]

are you unfamiliar with non-gebrokts? The entire minhag is based on the assumption that somewhere in your matzah is a not-fully-baked millimeter of dough. It will combine with water and 18 minutes will go by and it will become chometz.

[anonymous]

Why would you boil sugar? And how would that help remove chometz?

G*3

[onionsoupmix]

you boil sugar before pesach because the rule of botel b'shishim does not apply to chometz on pesach but does apply before pesach. So if a kernel of wheat fell into your sugar and you boiled it before pesach, you could then count that sugar as botel b'shishim on pesach even with the wheat kernel. Or something like that.

[onionsoupmix]

fascinating. where did you find this article & why?

[aunt_becca]

we sometimes go to a chassidish family's home. if a utensil drops on the floor, they put it in a bag and place it in a drawer, because it is then considered chametz to them. Why? because trace particles of chametz could be in the floor, and once a utensil comes into contact, it's all over. They also put cheesecloth over their faucets.
I have a dear friend, who's family made aliyah. She told me that certain people in her community will only use shmaltz that they render themselves. No oil, even heckshered evoo. She doesn't subscribe to the crazy chumra ju jour, and what she said was that the idea of "let all who are hungry, come and eat" is damn near impossible, since nobody trusts each others kashrut. Sad, really.

[fetteredwolf]

My family is Litvak and eats gebrokts, but if a utensil falls on the floor it's not used for the rest of Pesach.

ETA: By this I mean my parent's house. I just clean the kitchen the day before, tape up all the cabinets, sell the chametz, and vacuum the rest of the house and say I'm done. According to them I'm like a goy.

[sethg_prime]

The famous “Rupture and Reconstruction” essay suggests that indeed, there was less of a need to out-frum your friends and neighbors a few generations back, because these days (a) even in right-wing FFB communities, people trust rules written down in books more than they trust the way they were raised; (b) the Orthodox community has become more bourgeois, and so people’s identity as frummies is tied up in what they buy; (c) people feel more distant from God now, and they impose chumras on themselves to make up for that.

[elcour]

All that, indeed, is true - yet it's the socioeconomic factor that played the greatest role here, as OSM points out in her post.
People became richer, and things became cheaper. Western consumerism channels, thus, expressions of piety in a particular direction.

[onionsoupmix]

Interesting. So western consumerism is responsible for all the chumros? Somehow, I don't know if the majority of frummies would see it that way.

[sethg_prime]

Of course not! They’d have admit that their precious culture is being buffeted by influences from the secular world that have nothing to do with sex.