Pesach: going well so far

[liv]

I left all the Pesach cleaning until the week before the festival, which was not necessarily the greatest plan. But I managed to do most of what I wanted to do, with a mix of practically useful spring-cleaning and religiously useful removal of leavened material from my house. I did completely clear out my office of miscellaneous piles of paper that don't really have a filing space, which made me feel a lot better. I ended up skimping on the bathrooms (incomplete spring cleaning) and the freezer (meaning I can't really invite any frummers to eat in my house this week, but for myself I'll live with having frozen pizzas around and just not open the freezer this week). I didn't manage to do any exercise at all, but I think Pesach probably is a valid exception to my routine.

Then I had an extremely relaxing evening on Thursday; I went out for a nice meal, both to reward myself for mostly completing the cleaning and to leave my kitchen pristine for the festival. And Friday it was gloriously sunny and I showed up at my parents' late morning, and we had a remarkably non-stressed day of preparing the seder meal. I mean, it was intense, we were pretty much on the go all day, but we finished with more than half an hour to spare and no last-minute panics, and nobody screamed at anybody else and it was a pleasant relaxed family thing that also resulted in preparing lots of delicious food.

By the evening we had Screwy, P'tite Soeur and her partner, jack and his mother, and a couple of guests from the Cambridge community. No Thuggish Poet this year as he'd abandoned the seder for a completely unmissable opportunity to go to Hawaii! We started early, and we ran through the liturgy fairly rapidly. It seems we've had a pretty narrow window between having to abbreviate things because there were children too young to appreciate an extended rabbinic discussion, and having to abbreviate things for a grandmother too old and in pain to sit through more than about 45 minutes of liturgy. I think that's probably about right; there's this platonic ideal of a Seder which is five rabbis (male, with no visible dependents!) sitting in Bnei Barak discussing detailed points of Jewish law until it's time for morning prayers, and then there's reality which involves families and is always messy and falls short of the ideal, and that's how it should be.

Anyway Screwy did an excellent job, and managed to stimulate discussion and thought without letting things overrun. I think it was probably a bit confusing for my poor mother-in-law as nobody really stopped to explain what was going on, but never mind. The food was wonderful as ever; I think Mum has got seder meals for 15 plus with various dietary requirements down to a fine art by now! And we had a very very extended discussion about the wrath bit after the meal, as well as indulging in what has become a tradition of doing imitations of all the characters in One Only Kid.

jack came for me mid-morning on Saturday, and stayed around chatting and hanging out with my lovely family for a little while before we headed back to Stoke. And second seder here absolutely worked perfectly. I've mentioned before that I love my community because they handle the practical things and leave me to just deal with liturgy. This is particularly evident at Passover when there's a lot of practical stuff to think of, not least preparing a meal for 30 people. Practical notes for the future: the community seem a bit confused about the handwashing thing, so it'll probably help if I bring things like ewers and towels. And they don't apparently own a havdalah candle... We had a couple of small boys present to read the Four Questions and enjoy the children's bits, and a handful of non-Jewish guests, and a good turnout of our regular members. The only thing missing really was anyone with any musical ability at all; we tried to sing a few of the most essential songs but it was a bit embarrassing.

I timed the pre-meal liturgy at exactly one hour, and wrapped up the after-meal part fairly quickly, though ended up needing to help the kids find the afikoman. I made sure to allow enough time for informal discussion or just general chat, bringing the community back on topic at appropriate intervals. I'm quite pleased with myself; I think I pitched it just right, with a clearly recognizable traditional liturgy but enough explanation to make it accessible to people who either aren't familiar with the traditions, or who know seder only as a fairly meaningless recital of some mumbo-jumbo. There were a few requests to do Friday night services the same way, with a fair amount of reading in English and lots of explanation. I am not very willing to do this, partly because it would completely uproot the community's Orthodox traditions but mainly because Friday night services are not meant to be pedagogical in the way that a seder is. But I do take that as a compliment!

After that I really really enjoyed a couple of days' break with jack. I'm slightly disappointed that Passover coincided exactly with Easter this year, making it impossible for me to go to Eastercon (I was getting pangs of envy reading tweets about the con), but on the other hand a wet, miserable bank holiday was just perfect for staying in with my betrothed and recuperating from the prep and the festival. And jack helped me rearrange furniture in preparation for our Bed which is arriving this weekend, including stopping pretending that a rather rickety pasteboard chest of draws can double as a filing cabinet. So in general my "habitat" (as the cool kids are calling it) is gradually improving.

I also took yesterday off work, allowing me to go to London and fetch my actual finished wedding dress. I really can not get over how amazing it is! Train ticket restrictions meant I didn't have a lot of time in town, but I did manage to return some of my makeup to the big Oxford Street Selfridges. Thank you all for the extensive and supportive discussions on my makeup panic post; I will try to get back to everybody now that the immediate panic of Passover is over. I think commenters on DW posts have a tendency to tell you what they think you want to hear, which is completely lovely and I do feel really supported, but in this case I am genuinely really conflicted, so it's not surprising that I got conflicted advice. But talking it through did help me to sort out in my mind what I really want, and separate some of the issues that had got tangled. So I think the best compromise was to return all the primer, foundation, blusher etc, but keep the good quality eyeshadow and lipstick. I think it was mainly having completely a smooth, perfect mask that smelled like makeup which was really freaking me out, rather than wearing makeup at all. And I realized I care a lot more about having my face match the awesomeness of the dress than I do about looking good in photos, and you've all reassured me I can choose to do one without the other. A smaller but significant thing is that I feel a lot less trapped by £30 worth of good quality eyeshadow and lipstick, than I did by £115 worth of assorted makeup I don't really know how to use. I haven't completely committed myself to wearing this stuff on the day, but I now feel like I either can or not and it's not going to be this huge drama. So, yay.

Comments

[lethargic_man]

I left all the Pesach cleaning until the week before the festival, which was not necessarily the greatest plan. But I managed to do most of what I wanted to do, with a mix of practically useful spring-cleaning and religiously useful removal of leavened material from my house. I did completely clear out my office of miscellaneous piles of paper that don't really have a filing space, which made me feel a lot better. I ended up skimping on the bathrooms (incomplete spring cleaning)

There's no need to do spring cleaning at the same time as Pesach cleaning; it only leads to more stress. I only started a week before the festival (though that was only enough thanks to the bank holiday on erev Pesach), but I didn't even touch anywhere where no חָמֵץ could have been (the bathroom and the bedroom). Time once again to give thanks I live in a child-free household (as the alternative would mean חָמֵץ could be anywhere)...

[liv]

You're right, of course, that Pesach cleaning is not spring cleaning. That's why I quite deliberately exclude things like washing curtains or tidying the loft. I find it useful to combine them at least partially, though, firstly because the place has to be at a pretty good standard of clean and tidy in order to remove the chametz, so I might as well finish it off. And secondly because I am frankly unlikely to undertake a deep, thorough cleaning without the festival as my motivation. That's why I skipped the bathrooms when I realized that I was running out of time; I agree that there's nothing in there with the status of chametz, and also personally, I will clean the bathrooms fairly regularly anyway for hygiene reasons. I could have just moved all the piles of paper out of the way, dusted and vacuumed behind them, and put them straight back in the same chaos they were to start with, but I didn't do that because it is actually quite useful for me to have a tidy office and everything properly filed, and the extra time / effort / stress compared to a purely ritual clean were minimal.

You managed to complete your cleaning in a week, but to be fair your flat is rather smaller than mine, and probably kept in a better state year round so you didn't have as much to do. I am surprised you were able to use the Good Friday bank holiday, actually; I'd expected you'd be travelling to Israel then! How on earth did you manage to arrive before shabbat if you also spent the day cleaning? I certainly had that problem, I needed to spend the Friday bank holiday travelling (and I was merely spending seder at my parents' in Cambridge, let alone in a foreign country!) so I had to have everything pesachdich by Thursday evening. I think I will try to allow 2 weeks or at least a full week including a whole weekend next year.

[lethargic_man]

I am surprised you were able to use the Good Friday bank holiday, actually; I'd expected you'd be travelling to Israel then! How on earth did you manage to arrive before shabbat if you also spent the day cleaning?

I was in London for Pesach. After my extended family had agreed last year to go to northern Israel for Pesach, my uncle and aunt and their respective families booked to go to Eilat anyway, leaving me fuming, and then my parents decided that (having just bought a flat in Golders Green, so they could help price people like me out of the market have a base to stay when visiting their baby granddaughter), they could no longer afford to go to Israel anyway, this year; so we had Pesach in London, which was nice, except that aviva_m had to cancel, and spent Pesach in Berlin.

[liv]

Ooh, Pesach in London with your parents and your brother's family, that sounds lovely. And means you can be much more productive during chol hamoed, I imagine. It's a shame that aviva_m wasn't able to join you, though.

[naath]

I wouldn't put money on their being no chametz in my bathroom... (although if I believed in ritually purifying my house of chametz for Pesach then I would probably take more steps to ensure there wasn't).

People talking about cleaning for Pesach got me into cleaning-mode so now my lounge-dinner is hoovered and my kitchen mostly clean :-p (still full of chametz though), alas I also failed to reach the bathroom.

[liv]

Heh, yay interfaith cleaning inspiration. I am not absolutely sure that no breadcrumb ever found its way into my bathroom (eg on the soles of my slippers or something), but there is even halachically speaking a point where stuff no longer counts as food, it's just general dust and fluff. And I'm basically willing to apply that to the kind of grime that you get in bathrooms, at least partly because I am squeamish about eating there anyway.

[naath]

If the rule is "no chametz you might eat" well, yeah, I'm not eating the bathroom fluff OMG HOW GROSS WOULD THAT BE... I should, er, evict some of the fluff I guess.

I haven't checked the ingredients on all my Lush stuff for stealth chametz (because not Jewish so don't care), and whilst I don't EAT my soap I do use it near my mouth so, er, I guess there's a rule for that?

[liv]

Technically it's not chametz if a dog wouldn't eat it, not just if you wouldn't. But I'm basically happy that bathroom fluff isn't food. And chametz in soaps and cosmetics shouldn't count as those are definitely not food; some people like to buy kosher for passover stuff but that's just being extra extra cautious, it's not really required.

[redbird]

If my advice was conflicted on that, it's probably because I have my own "don't make me do that" issues about makeup.

I do write comments that are telling people (some variant of) what I think they want to hear, but it's things like "no, the voice in your head that says it's your fault that your mother is being passive-aggressive is wrong" (that person didn't ask to be told that, but I thought it might help). I don't think either "congratulations on the new job/award" or sympathy for bereavement count, because those are things where I may be the 30th person saying it but the person I'm talking to is probably still comforted, or glad.

[liv]

Thank you, I actually found it really helpful to be reminded that other people strongly dislike makeup, I'm not just being crazy about it for no reason, or because of ingrained femme-phobia. I don't think your advice was conflicted, just the sum of the comments I got on the post covered just about the whole range of opinions that I was already vacillating between!

I suppose I included the comment about what friends think I want to hear is that hadassah said it was no good asking on the internet, because people would care more about validating my feelings than giving me actually practical advice. Which I think is true to an extent; as it happened I kind of needed some feelings validation at the time I posted, because I was feeling rather got at. But also different people were picking up on different things to validate, because I was very confused anyway when I posted! Though I don't think it's entirely fair, I think lots of my friends are very good at giving me practical help with decision making, and I'm on the whole glad that people tend to be tactful about it rather than making me feel stupid.

[naath]

"because people would care more about validating my feelings than giving me actually practical advice." Ah, but you carefully mentioned that hadassah had given you this makeup-advice; so we were on the lookout to not be stepping on her toes... and by we I mean I.

Yousa certainly not stoopid.

[liv]

Well, and I appreciate that too! I mean, part of my problem was that I do respect my friend who is being kind to me, even if I don't necessarily like her advice. Ignoring that aspect would be solving the wrong problem, which I admit is not uncommon among geeks, but I'm always pleased when I manage to make clear what I'm actually looking for advice about.

[naath]

Social problems are always so messy and not easily solved with maths! Damn them and their slippery nature!

[kaberett]

I'm really, really glad that you've come to a decision about what to do that makes you feel good.

I'm also glad that it sounds like everything else ran reasonably smoothly!

[liv]

Thank you! I don't think I've exactly come to a decision, but I have cleared out the stuff that was really weighing on my mind, and left a range of possibilities any of which would work for me. No makeup at all is still on the cards, but I've eliminated the version of no makeup that involves insulting my good friends by rejecting their gift and spending over £100 on stuff I'm never going to use.

[kaberett]

Eh, I think that sounds like a decision? "I think I can be happy somewhere in THIS range of things, so should take THESE actions to make myself happy about Deciding What To Do On The Day." So. Those things. :-)

(Also I think I might have been too crazy to reservup to you so should do that.)

[liv]

OK, let's call it a decision, then! I feel now that I have moved on and can stop worrying about the issue, rather than being mentally embroiled in it.

Don't at all worry about the RSVP; informal (eg via DW comment) is completely fine! You said ages ago that you might be willing to help out with some people-herding stuff; do you think you are likely to feel up to that? If not it's not in the least a problem; I don't want to impose on you nor assume that you are a frail pathetic creature! And I do realize it may not be predictable in advance, which is also perfectly fine.

[rmc28]

I now feel like I either can or not and it's not going to be this huge drama. So, yay.

Definitely yay :-)

[liv]

Yes, I'm glad I spent lots of time thinking about the various alternatives and getting support from lovely people on DW, so now I'm very confident that the decision I made to return most of the makeup was the right one. And I've figured out some stuff about myself, and not let the drama put me off enjoying the wedding, so it's all good.

[wendylove]

Clearly your standards for Pesach cleaning are higher than mine, in that I firmly believe that putting painters' tape across the shelf/over the door and signing the form for our local rabbi to sell the chometz to a non-Jew is sufficient. There is chometz in one of my freezers, but it's not mine, you see. Until Saturday night. (I did have the house cleaned by a cleaning service; what with small children and guests in and out, it is one area where money *can* buy happiness.)

At any rate, your Seders sound lovely -- our family ones are constrained in much the same way, between the old and young, but I completely agree that that's how Seders work. (And I like to think that R. E ben A was like a man of seventy years because he'd been cooking all day, but that's just me. :)

[liv]

Eh, it's not that I am super picky about Pesach standards, it's that I really don't like the sell to a non-Jew workround. Pesach is supposed to be a whole community thing, I find it conceptually unpleasant to start making big distinctions about who's in the tribe. (Apart from the actual Paschal sacrifice, of course, but that's purely academic for my observance!)

Paying someone to clean would definitely make sense if it was kids' mess as well as my own. I love that idea of grey hair due to stressful Pesach prep, though!