Rabbi Eli J. Mansour of New York's Syrian Congregation Bet Yaakob and DailyHalacha.com, writes about bedikat hametz (בדיקת חמץ) in his daily email.
He cites the Hid”a (Rav Haim Yosef David Azulai, 1724-1807), in his work Mahazik Beracha (Se’if Katan 7), and the Sha’areh Teshuba (Se’if Katan 1), who observed the widespread practice not to make a thorough search of one’s home for Bedikat Hametz since the residence is thoroughly cleaned before the search would take place.
R. Mansour adds that "Places in the home that were thoroughly cleaned and kept free of Hametz have the status of places where Hametz is not used at all, and thus do not, technically speaking, require Bedikat Hametz. Thus, although one is certainly required to conduct a search on the night of the 14th of Nissan, there is room to justify the prevalent practice not to search thoroughly in all areas of the home." He also notes that "According to some authorities, this is allowed as long as the house was cleaned three days before Pesah."
In our house, we start cleaning well before three days before Pesach. With 17 days to go, the only rooms remains to be "hametz free" are the kitchen and combined dining/living room. All the bedrooms are hametz free as is the garage - including the freezer and "spare" compact refrigerator.
In the past, I cleared all hametz from the house with carefully planned shopping and menus; anything left went to non-Jewish acquaintances. Now, like most folks, we go along with the fiction of "selling" the hametz to a noker (non-Jew).
And then, at the end of the holiday (מוצאי חג) I race to the local supermarket - not Jewish owned - to buy flour for Moroccan mufleta to prepare for an invasion of our Sefardi and Mizrachi friends - and maybe an Ashkenazi or two, too.
So now we have "hametz-free" areas. It's not enough that no hametz ever entered the rooms; the wife worries that an invisible crumb clung to us and dropped off in the room. (It could be worse. Her mother used to whitewash the walls!)
The rabbis tell us we must search our buildings for leven, hametz.
The house is hametz free and we know it's hametz free.
What to do?
Here, the wife lays out 10 good sized pieces of aluminum foil.
Into each piece of foil she puts a small piece of bread - saved especially for the occasion.
She C A R E F U L L Y wraps the small piece of bread inside the foil and seals it almost hermetically.
Finally, after chasing me outside, she places the 10 carefully wrapped bits of hametz around the house - in all the rooms in which we "live."
Invited back into the house, I read the blessing before the hunt, then arm myself with a hurricane lamp - safer than a candle, especially in my hands - and begin a room-by-room search for hametz, with the wife close behind.
She says nothing unless I start to leave an area where I missed a package. Then she lets me know that I need to be more diligent and I go back until all the foil is found. This continues until all 10 pieces of hametz-in-foil are in a bowl in her hand.
Once the pieces have been counted, by each of us, the after-the-hunt blessing is read and the 10 pieces put into a baggie not to be touched until the time arrives to burn them.
When the kids were small, they went with me On The Great Hametz Hunt, but they liked the burning part of the event more. Kids and fire. Some things never change.
Judaism is truly family oriented.
The hunt for - and burning of - hametz.
The building and decorating of the sukkah (and the hauling of food to and from the sukkah)
Walking as a family to synagogue on Shabat.
Knowing everyone would be at the table at all Shabat meals.
The only "Pesach thing" that ever bothered me was one line in biktav that reads in relation to the seder: "there shall be no alien eat thereof" כח-בן נכר לא-יאכל בו. We had for many years a dear friend who wanted to join us at the seder. Unlike Thanksgiving, unlike sitting in a sukkah, this was the one time she was excluded.
I understand the reasons for the exclusion, including שפך חמתך אל-הגוים אשר לא-ידעוך meaning non Jews.
Still.
A few words on words.
R. Mansour, of a Syrian background, and R. Ya'aqob Menashe, who I suspect is Iraqi all write transliterations as they speak the words in their version of Hebrew. R. Sender Haber, an Ashkenazi, also write as he talks. As do I.
Variety is nice, but comprehension - understanding - is better.
Which is why I recommend to anyone struggling with transliterations to follow their best effort with the actual Hebrew (as I frequently do on this blog site). Most word processors have Hebrew capability, and most blog hosts can accommodate the Hebrew characters.
So whether it is massa or matzah or maseh, whether is it massos or matzehs it all comes back to מצה and מצות.
חג פסח כשר ושמח
הריני מקבל עלי מצוה עשה של ואהבת לרעך כמוך, והריני אוהב כל אחד מבני ישראל כנפשי ומאודי
