The liberation of imperfection

11:55 pm Erev Pesah

It is quiet in the house. Almost still. Near midnight, the night before Passover and a truce has descended between me and my work. After 32 years of "making Pesah," I have honed the routine, crafted a system, learned to surrender to the shmutz, the dirt, I cannot vanquish, and revel in the deep cleaning I undertake only once a year.

The house is ready. The cooking awaits. Now is the sweet interregnum of peace.


6:30 am the day of the first seder

It is these preparations, this clean-pause-cook, that is Passover to me. This is my seder. I have my order, the steps I must go through (though the details vary from year to year for I can never remember exactly how I made things fit).

And I have far more than my fair share of questions. Cleaning is meditative, and lets the mind wander. Thoughts range from the mundane (What would happen if I stacked the dishes this way?) to the sublime (How can we ever repay the world, and our loved ones, for the unearned blessings we receive? Or even more somber: how can we bear the pain - and guilt - of knowing there are those who live without such blessings, whom we can never reach, and never help?)

The seder and the week-long food regimen frame the holiday for me. But it is this cleaning, these meditations, and the stillness that sweeps in after all is done, that shape my spiritual center. This is the place where Passover happens for me.

Perhaps it is because of the honesty of Passover. The High Holidays are a time of spiritual cleansing, where we are asked to be pure, to rid ourselves of jealously, pettiness, obsessions, hurt and anger; where we will ourselves to be always good.

Those are lofty, noble ambitions, ones that should serve as our ethical beacon. But they are also unattainable. We always fall short. We always fail. So, like the recidivist ex-smoker, we return to them, and re-commit to them, year after year.

Passover has a more realistic view of life. It understands that though we should reach for perfection, we should accept falling short. The night before Passover has a ritual that teaches us this.

As darkness falls, we should have rid our homes of all hametz, all leavened, puffed up, yeasty food. To be sure that we have succeeded, we sweep through our houses one last time, checking all the nooks and crannies where leavening might be hiding.

There is a grand feeling of accomplishment, job well done, with the completion of this search. And yet, truth be told, there is always that nagging suspicion. Did I get all the shelves? Did I reach far enough into the sofa? Is there a pocket, a drawer, a purse that is hiding a candy bar?

But we are not to worry about that. For the astonishing ritual of bedikat hametz, this last searching for all the hametz, relieves us of the burden of perfection.

After the search, as we set aside all the hametz we found, we recite:

"All hametz that is in my possession which I have not seen, and that I have not cleaned out, and of which I am unaware, is now nullified and declared ownerless. It is as the dust of the earth."

Redemption cannot wait for perfection, else it would never come. So, while on the High Holidays we are bidden to seek the perfect, on Passover we are taught to settle for the best.

As we do with our hametz, so we do with our souls. Once we work as hard as we can, we must forgive our imperfections, declare them null and void, not let them drag down our spirit or ambition.

Passover is indeed the holiday of liberation, an antidote to the slavery of perfection. Enjoy.

May you have a sweet Pesah, filled with the freedom you need, and the blessings you did not earn.