A Hole in the Floor: Prepping for Passover

Because of all these things...

I am in Lund’s, which I am never in, combing the shelves for the whole-wheat matzoh that I can’t live without at Passover. I also need dessert to bring to my hostess’s seder. Whatever they have is not where it was last year.

Spying a smallish, elderly woman who appears to be milling around the grape juice, I smile hopefully. She returns the smile and I take the plunge: do you know where the Passover matzohs are?

She knows. With a sweeping gesture, she indicates the aisle where everything is stored this year. They seem to be expanding their stash of Passover goods, and that suits me fine.

Turns out the woman I am talking with is Russian. We end up chatting for fifteen minutes between the chocolate seder plates and the Kedem grape juices. She asks me if I prepare for the holiday ‘in the traditional way.’ I tell her I do, though I wasn’t raised in an orthodox home.

In the early days of our marriage, my former spouse and I bought a few boxes of matzoh, gave away our bread and pasta and called it a day. When we moved to the Midwest and he became a cantor, we had to scrub countertops and cabinets and exchange dishes, pots, and everything else that came in contact with what the rabbis call “hametz” or leavening.

When a congregant said, “Passover is when you learn the meaning of slavery,” I laughed. But I knew exactly what he meant.

Post-divorce, I have a choice. I can go back to my old ways, or, for consistency and my son’s sake, I can wash, scrub, boil, change dishes, wash, scrub and boil some more. With only two days to make up my mind, I am still on the fence. Should I turn my house upside down to make sure we are really observing Passover, or can I get away with less? I look at the Russian woman.

“I think, maybe?” I say, “though I’m not sure why.”

She tells me the answer without knowing it.  “My mother,” she says, in a thick Russian accent, “used to bake her matzohs in secret, in the middle of the night, and stored them in a hole in our kitchen floor.”

I can guess at the reason, but she tells me anyway. “In Russia, we are not allowed to practice religion, and for Jews it was extremely bad. My mother would never eat any bread during the holiday, but we – her children – ate it in school.  She used to ask us to save some of the matzoh, but, what do children know? We ate most of it. If she didn’t have enough for the whole eight days, she went without. Now when I think of it, I want to cry.”

She looks at me, as only tiny old ladies with crinkly blue eyes and Russian accents can. “Zo, my dear. Happy Passover. May you enjoy in good health.”

And we go on, she and I, to our separate ways, two days before the holiday. I know that if I decide to continue the tradition, I will have to come home after work all day tomorrow and start cleaning. My son Josh will say he’ll help but more likely he won’t and I will be up very late—scrubbing and grumbling.

I know that in two days my breaded days are over.

And my mouth is watering already, for the bread I won’t have.

I am doing this, why?  Because my mother, and her mother, and all the generations I can possibly imagine and can’t imagine centuries before they were born did it.

Because as a friend once said when I sat at his seder table, Jewish people have survived centuries of oppression since no matter what they say or do to us, we keep our traditions.

Because eating matzoh for eight days isn’t enough; I need to clear the room, clear my head, clear a space for it.

Because when all is said and done, preparing the house for Passover gives me a new way to talk to God.

It doesn’t involve prayer, which is beautiful, but ethereal; it involves an action I can take, a taste in my mouth, a change in the way I eat, drink, use my dishes. It says I am here, I am present, I am living the holiday in a very particular way and space and time. I am listening to it, and in doing so, giving God a way to listen to me, and to all of us, who are trying to be Jewish—in hiding or in the light.

Because when I sit down for the first seder, every single year since I’ve been a child I get a feeling of being lifted up, and it stays with me all night through; because Judaism is not so much about language or prayers or ideas as it is about the sanctification of small things, the things we do in our homes, when we are eating, getting ready for bed or work, and telling the stories of people we never met but who did the very same things we are doing. Because Passover encompasses all these things in a single week.

Because this Russian lady had to hide her matzoh in a hole in the floor and her mother wouldn’t eat if she ran out of it.  And I can eat matzoh in the office where I work, and my son can eat it at school.

Because if Josh didn’t have the experience of matzohs and seders I would be guilty of a kind of child abuse.

Because of all these things, I will go and scrub and wipe and lift and haul and get ready for Passover.

And my heart, like the hearts of others might be when it is two days before Christmas or Easter, will be light. At least after the dishes are done. And the cabinets. And the stove.

Photo: Sedar Plate by Shoshannah

Filed Under: Being Jewish

Tags: Passover, passover cleaning, Passover preparations, Passover traditions