Oh Passover! Oh Passover! How Soon You are Approaching!

Oh ... Passover! Pesach! The feast of unleavened bread! The week of pained colon! So on, and so forth. 'Tis the season, folks, are you fully prepared?

I'll just say that I'm not. Period. I bought some stuff to exist as Passover-specific, and I'm planning on taking a bucket-load of things to be kashered tomorrow -- pots, pans, and other bigger items that I can't kasher on my stovetop. But beyond that? I haven't started cleaning and the amount of kosher l'pesach products I've purchased is relegated to some jam, some of the Yehuda Gluten-Free Matzos (which don't fulfill the mitzvah for the seder), and a few other things. I'm trying to buy as little as humanly possible for Passover, largely because over the past three years the volume of things that I had in my dating and married life sort of horrifies me now. When I was married, we had two homes and each of those homes had three sets of everything for everything. We had Meat, Dairy, Parve and Passover Meat, Dairy Parve. Among two homes, that amounted to twelve sets of things. Of course, the Parve weren't full sets, but otherwise, we had it. It was just too much. So I'm going minimalist this year.

Thus, tomorrow, it being the kashering day, also is going to be the "start the cleaning" day. I've got a kosher l'pesach Smoothie Maker for all of my liquid-diet needs, and I'm planning on doing a lot of salads and eggs.

And on that note, I'm also going Sephardic. That means I plan on digging through piles of rice to get all the bad things out, so that come Friday night, I have clean, kosher-for-Passover rice. I probably won't delve too much into beans, but I do plan on having quinoa around. Flax Seed also is a friend of mine, so you can expect that will be in the diet plan, too. Also? I was elated to find out there are certain brands of Rice and Almond milk that are good for Passover (for Sephardim) WITHOUT certification. Color me stoked! (Find the Sephardic kosher-for-Passover products list here.)

Luckily, I have a pantry that I can simply close off, and I plan on taping off all of my cabinets, too. This is going to be live-on-the-counter Passover.
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The reality, lucky for me, is that there really isn't any chametz in my home to begin with. The only thing that is chametz are the gluten-free oats that I have. Otherwise, this is a 24/7/365-chametz-free zone. Does that mean any less cleaning? Nope. Oats are chametz, and thus hardcore cleaning is a must.

I'm also one of those people who always ascribed to the idea that on Passover, a house should be completely clean of chametz. You have plenty of warning, you know when Passover is, so eat all of your bread and cereal beforehand. I've never bought into this whole "sell your chametz" thing. It just seems like a cheap copout. But this year? Well, the gluten-free oats that I have are from Trader Joe's, and I have an entire unopened bag of them. There are no Trader Joe's near here, and the other gluten-free oats I can purchase are hella expensive. So I'm being that person this year: I'm keeping my oats, locking them away, and feeling like a hypocrite.

In addition, I'm planning to do a hardcore car-cleaning scrub down this week. We all eat in our cars, we can't lie about it. Whether it's a snack or a coffee or a nosh, we do it. I have, without a doubt, eaten some delicious oat-based granola bars in my car, and that's chametz, so I'm going to vacuum the heck out of my car. Plus, it's a good time for Spring Cleaning, so why not?

But I have a week to do all of this. I really need to do a bit of meal-planning so that I have everything I need once Friday attacks. I have plans for both of the seders, yet no plans for the last days of Passover. In between, I plan on my staples of Matzo + Cream Cheese + Jam for snacking and lots of smoothies and raw foods for meals. Still, it's going to be a rough week as a Gluten-Free Vegetarian. I might have to cave and rock out some fish this week.

If you're in a last-minute rush and need some help with finding a seder, figuring out the rules and regulations, or are looking for some gnarly recipes, here are some helpful resources!

• Passover.org | Yes, it's run by Chabad. They own the domain. I think this is impressive! Their website has everything from the blessings to a bounty of recipes that will leave you giggling with joy. I highly recommend the Lemon Ice Cream. Also, they have a calendar to keep you on track with what you're supposed to do when. Print it out, and abide!
• Vegetarian Times Super Seder | If you're like me, you're looking for filling, protein-packed vegetarian meals. These recipes sound delish!
• Oranges + Seder Plates | If you're curious what the history is, read my post on it. 
• Unconverted at the Seder Table? | Yeah, it came up once. It's an interesting thing to consider. Then again, we're supposed to have strangers at our table!
• JoyofKosher.com | It is what it is. A seder-plate full of recipes!
• The Orthodox Union | They have everything you could need up -- a sefirat ha'omer chart, a guide to foods, and more. Check out their digital magazine here. 

Have any questions you think I can answer? Just let me know!

The Magical Minhag Tour

At the beginning of November, I posted about my curiosity when it comes to divorce and minhagim (customs) -- do you keep 'em? What if you're a convert, do you go back to being able to choose? Does it matter if you have kids? Does the length of the marriage matter?

Basically, I'm trying to figure out what constitutes minhag retention in the "frum" (religious) Jewish community.

In case you were wondering perhaps why traditions are so important. Check it, Proverbs 1:8.

I spoke with a rabbi recently about this question I had, and after some quick conversation, he said that he doesn't understand why I wouldn't be able to go back to choosing my own minhagim. So I'm researching and exploring Sephardic traditions, because for some reason, a lot of them seem to make a whole lot more sense to me. That and they're absolutely fascinating. (One Sephardic tradition has it that when you say havdalah, you are to look into the wine, and if you see your face, you laugh aloud after the bracha!)

But you're probably asking yourself: Wait, why would you choose your customs? Who chooses their own customs? Isn't the point of a custom that it's something that's passed down?

Well, when you grow up in a nominally Jewish family (you know, the kind of family where you know you're Jewish but have no clue what a lulav is) and become a ba'al teshuvah or when you choose to be Jewish and convert, you don't have customs. You don't claim any traditions, and when you do, they're typically the kind of things where you know what Chanukah is and you light the menorah. There are minimal traditional differences in lighting a menorah (right to left? gain candles or lose candles?)

So, in these situations, you're blessed with the opportunity to choose your customs, your minhagim.

Well, what if you're a convert, you practice nominal Ashkenazi traditions throughout your pre-conversion existence, then the moment you convert you get engaged, and then married to someone who also has nominal traditions that no one really practices, and then you get divorced from that person. What happens?

Let's say you grow up without any Jewish customs, you become religious in your early 20s, you meet a nice Satmar fellow and get married. You take on the stringent Satmar customs, and then, just a few years into your marriage, you get divorced. Are you bound to holding to those Satmar traditions until you meet someone new? And then what if that person isn't Satmar?

What if you're married, observing Lubavitch customs, and you get married and have three children. Then, you get divorced when your kids are all under the age of 5-years-old, and marry a Spanish Portuguese Jew. Do you adopt the customs of you new husband? Because your children are under the age of b'nei mitzvah and their father plays no role in their life, do your kids take on your new husband's traditions? Or do you raise them in the Lubavitch tradition of their father?

Is your HEAD exploding now!?

Over Shabbat we were considering all of the variations and complications that come with minhagim and the wide, expansive set of traditions that can vary from community to community and even family to family within that community. The glory of minhagim is that they are not law. As Rabbi Marc Angel says in "Exploring Sephardic Customs and Traditions,"

One needs to always remember that the purpose of observing minhagim is to bring us closer to God, closer to our tradition, and closer to each other. 

Furthermore, Rabbi Angel cites Rabbi Eliezer Papo who says that "God knows what is in a person's heart" and that minhagim are not meant to be oneupmanship. If the observance of a minhag results in presumptuousness, it's a very uncool thing.

So my question to you, readers is: Have you been married and divorced? How did you choose your customs, or did you just stick with what you  knew? Did you even think about it or consult a rabbi or was it just something that you didn't think about? If you did get to choose your customs as a ba'al teshuvah or convert, how did you go about doing so? 

Choosing: Ashkenazic vs. Sephardic

I've been meaning to post this question for quite some time (okay, since the divorce), but after talking it over very briefly with a few friends, here I am finally posting it.

Before I got married, I had the option -- as a convert -- to choose my minhagim or customs. That means that technically, because I didn't grow up with any, I had the option of choosing the lifestyle of the Sephardim. Beans and rice on Passover! And a lot of other really awesome, fascinating, unique customs that would have made me more normal in Israel than here in the U.S.

(Sephardim, oddly enough, are more strict on many things, including bishul akum, which forbids a Jew to eat food prepared by a non-Jew, something I observed when in the conversion process that I had no problem with -- this is where that "Jew turns on the flame" bit comes in handy for a non-Jew at a grocery store bakery or the like).

Then I got married, to someone with nominally Ashkenazic traditions and a strong Ashkenazic genealogy. Although he grew up not always following the no-leavening bit on Passover, he loosely identified with the Eastern European ways, considering his family came from Romania and areas around there. So we took on those customs, despite my pleas and knowing that we technically could choose our customs. We adopted our rabbi's Yekki tradition of washing our hands before both kiddush (blessing over wine) and motzi (blessing over bread), which, by the way, has a very legit and sense-making reason if you're interested.

But now, since I'm divorced, does that take me back to square one? Do I get to choose my customs? Or am I bound to the 16-month commitment to Ashkenazic traditions? I mean, I look like I'm straight-up Eastern European (note: my family hails from England and France and Switzerland), but ... until I get married (please HaShem) again, can I just have a little bit of Sephardic fun?!

VERSUS

I don't like the eggs, but ... 

For those of you interested in the halachos that are out there, they're incredibly confusing, and opinions are incredibly varied, but there's a great response and plenty of contradictory sources cited over at Fifth Avenue Synagogue. According to Rav Schachter, community comes before family, but how often do any of us live in a community anymore where there is a single established minhag? 

Can't wait to hear your thoughts!

An end to an honorary day.

A friend just sent me this photo from outside a restaurant in Colombia, where he is right now. I thank him immensely; it's a tiny little view of Israeli pride that we don't always get to see from countries outside of Israel, Europe and North America. Todah rabah!