A bit of perspective
Apr. 17th, 2011 07:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhuRecently I've heard of a few new chumrot (stringencies) regarding Passover kashrut. Actually, they way they were presented were not as chumrot, which is where people choose to follow a stringency, but as newly understood halachot that just happened to be stricter than what we all used to observe, because of a fear that we might possibly be doing it wrong.
Forgive me for saying this, but I think this is absurd. The holiday is supposed to be a time of rejoicing, and the Talmud is quite clear in many places that there's a limit to how far we need to go in eliminating chametz. Let me cite the second mishna in Pesachim:
אין חוששין שמא גיררה חולדה מבית לבית וממקום למקום
We do not worry that maybe a weasel carried a piece of chametz from house to house or from place to place....
Why not? This seems like a legitimate worry. I finish checking my kitchen, and while I'm checking my pantry, a weasel creeps into my kitchen, carrying chametz from my neighbor's house? Why shouldn't I worry about this? It's a plausible scenario, and I'd be in violation of a sever Torah law!
The Mishna concludes:
דאם כן מחצר לחצר ומעיר לעיר ־ אין לדבר סוף.
Because, if so, (one would have to worry about a weasel carrying) from courtyard to courtyard and from city to city... and there would be no end to the matter.
In other words, once you go down that path, you're going to drive yourself crazy with all these additional requirements that are not actually required by the Torah. We're supposed to make a good faith effort, and that's enough.
And if we let ourselves get scared about unlikely what-ifs, then the weasels have won.
Forgive me for saying this, but I think this is absurd. The holiday is supposed to be a time of rejoicing, and the Talmud is quite clear in many places that there's a limit to how far we need to go in eliminating chametz. Let me cite the second mishna in Pesachim:
אין חוששין שמא גיררה חולדה מבית לבית וממקום למקום
We do not worry that maybe a weasel carried a piece of chametz from house to house or from place to place....
Why not? This seems like a legitimate worry. I finish checking my kitchen, and while I'm checking my pantry, a weasel creeps into my kitchen, carrying chametz from my neighbor's house? Why shouldn't I worry about this? It's a plausible scenario, and I'd be in violation of a sever Torah law!
The Mishna concludes:
דאם כן מחצר לחצר ומעיר לעיר ־ אין לדבר סוף.
Because, if so, (one would have to worry about a weasel carrying) from courtyard to courtyard and from city to city... and there would be no end to the matter.
In other words, once you go down that path, you're going to drive yourself crazy with all these additional requirements that are not actually required by the Torah. We're supposed to make a good faith effort, and that's enough.
And if we let ourselves get scared about unlikely what-ifs, then the weasels have won.
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(no subject)
Date: 2011-04-18 12:05 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-04-18 01:20 am (UTC)By davening elsewhere.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-04-18 01:43 am (UTC)I assured him that we hold to the halachic minimum shiur of three full pieces of machine matza, or twice the equivalent area of hand-made, and not a bit more.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-04-18 02:58 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-04-18 11:31 am (UTC)Dare I ask what the new rulings are?
(no subject)
Date: 2011-04-18 11:46 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-04-18 02:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-04-18 03:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-04-18 04:19 pm (UTC)