On Preparing to Leave Egypt

Hey there, welcome to the OMFG podcast, Jewish wisdom for unprecedented times. My name is Rabbi Jen Gubitz, and together with my friend and co-conspirator and Seder leader Rabbi Jodi Gordon, we're glad you're with us.

OMFG is not just a podcast, it's a philosophy, a worldview, a way of keeping it Jewish while keeping it real. Sometimes, especially if those times are any time in the last few years, the world just gives you opportunity after opportunity to say, "OMFG!" Now, the world is the world, but Jewish tradition inspires us to call out to each other, and sometimes to God, and to figure out what it all means. And so this podcast is our way of inviting you into the conversation.

So in true OMFG fashion, we hope your hands are elbow-deep in matzah meal, from 2021 and that you're sipping an iced coffee or seltzer, welcome to OMFG.

Jen, hold on a second. Is your matzah meal really from 2021?

Okay, so it's unclear how old it is, but it's still good. Clearly, hanging on to your matzah meal from year to year is one way to deal with your intergenerational trauma of being worried if there will be enough food. And in 2020, when the pandemic hit, I was grateful for my anxiety because we had Passover products when they were particularly difficult to get. How old is your matzah meal?

Well, so I feel pretty proud because I had to buy a new container this year. And the reason is because my kids really like to eat matzah balls year round. So sometimes when I'm feeling fancy, I make them from the matzah meal instead of from the matzah ball mix. Which, you know, it's really a slog because you have to basically add your own salt, but no, it's okay. But it's an apt question because Passover is here and we are supposed to be cleaning out our pantries, our homes, getting ready for that amazing preparation ritual of bedikat chametz where we check for chametz with the wooden spoon and the feather and the candle. So it's a good question to ask ourselves, exactly how old is your matzah meal?

Which is really to say, what else in your life is stagnant and needs to be cleaned out? How many proverbial matzo meals and soup packets in your life have gone stale and no longer serve you? Most times I visit my parents, my dad gives me a gluten-free matzo ball mix he got on sale for me. Now that is true love, Gubitz parents style, but it also means that we have about 7 boxes of gluten-free matzo ball mix.

So I'm actually just a seltzer hoarder, which means good news, I don't have to clear out for Passover. But funny enough, I too have many boxes of gluten-free matzo ball mix, and I and no one in my family is gluten-free. So I'm not really sure why, but maybe it's because I secretly hoped you were coming for Seder. Anyway, we get it. Passover is about cleaning out what doesn't serve us. The word chamaetz, which is what folks avoid all week long on Passover, refers to leavened products. We read of this requirement to remove leaven from our houses in the Book of Exodus. The text goes as far to say that if you eat anything leavened during Passover, you will be cut off from Israel. That's fierce. So let's put a pin in that and we'll come back to it.

So many modern scholars compare it not only to the foods we clean out, but to the puffed-up-ness in our lives that no longer serves us either. Rabbi Art Woskow calls Chameitz the swollen sourness of our lives. Swollen and sour, like a pickle, which makes sense because Chameitz shares a root word with sour pickles, chamutzim, which I happen to love from the can and is also in my pantry. So what is that swollen sourness of our lives that we want, that we need, that's hard to discard?

I just want to go back for one second to say that now you reminded me what I need to get rid of. I buy a can of hamutzim, of Israeli sour pickles, like every time I can. And then I remember that actually none of us really like them. But moving on from sour pickles, I'm reminded of a teaching by Rabbi Kerry Olitsky, who suggests that chometz is the baggage we carry from broken promises, failed relationships, and personal disappointments that weigh heavily on us. It's the refuse of daily living, the residual stuff that emerges from poor decisions, mistakes in judgment, and moral failure.

And so Dr. Tamara Greene frames a really powerful question: into what locked cabinet Do I put all the pain and struggle that made the last previous year so difficult? We started with pickles and got to pain. So Jodi, what's got to go? For me, I'm still trying to move from scarcity mindset to abundance mindset. I want to cast away feeling competitive. I tend to hold grudges too. You're on my good side, Jodi. So I'd like to sweep some of those away. And this is suddenly starting to feel like Tashlich. For Yom Kippur real fast.

Hmm. I really love the question, though. I think what I want to try to eliminate, or at least reduce, is the amount of stuff that I bring into my home. I know that that's physical, but there is a spiritual element too. I mean, who among us does not enjoy the dopamine hit of an aimless trip to Marshalls or Target? But I have been trying to remember that I actually do have better and cheaper tools in my spiritual toolkit for that hit of happiness beyond another dress or a face wash. And beyond all of that, I feel like the Chameitz for me also has to do with what feels like a sort of two-sided coin of ambition and contentment. I'm getting better at it, but it's still there. On the one hand, those feelings of I should do more, I should try to be more, and also I do enough and I am enough. Dayenu. It brings me back to that Exodus text about being cut off from the people of Israel if you consume leaven during Passover. There's the legit food we can eat that can bring us together or break us apart. And there's also the personal stuff that keeps us enslaved, like grudges, competition, overindulgence. If we don't get rid of them, it can separate us from others too. I don't think we'll necessarily get kicked out of the people Israel, but I think it does make it a lot harder to be a part of community.

Yeah, wow, being cut off from the people of Israel, right? Yeah, those different experiences really can cut us off from relationship. So I've been studying and writing with the poet and spiritual guide Meryl Feld for almost 15 years, from my second year of rabbinical school, which is an astonishing amount of time ago. And every year she gives out prompts to help process different holidays and moments in your life. And Meryl always invites you to do the following when you're writing. This is from her website, derech.org, from previous years. She'll say something like this: "Tell the story or situation or moment or relationship," or in this case, personal hametz, "letting the details return to you in all their fullness." She would say something else like, "Since last Passover, what is the biggest piece of hametz that you desperately need to clean out?" and what is preventing you from throwing this chametz away?

That is so beautiful. I want to write about that. I do feel like it is also easier said than done, but I appreciate that there are multiple times a year in the Jewish calendar when we are invited to do this. On Tashlich especially, we cast away our sins. On Yom Kippur, we dive deep into our souls. And we are supposed to burn this chametz on the night before Passover. To stoke a fire full of leaven.

It's like a fire full of leaven. It's like a big pizza bagel schmutz fire.

It's a schmutz fire. I like that.

It's a schmutz fire. So Rabbi Chaviva Ner David, who's an Orthodox rabbi in Israel, leans into this ritual of burning chametz. You're going to tell us about it.

I am. And I also, I want to give Chaviva a special shout out. She's actually a friend of our family's and we're bringing her to Havre this summer. She's going to be in the Berkshires with her family, and she's going to come do a book talk here at our synagogue. And Chaviva and her whole family are awesome. So in the Women's Passover Seder Commentary, she talks about her study of the Zohar and its association with Hametz, or the association, I should say, between Hametz with the Yetzer Hara, right, our evil inclination, and Avodah Zarah, idol worship. She writes, And such is the evil inclination, like yeast in dough, because it enters into the insides of a person, slowly, slowly, and then it multiplies and grows more and more until all of the body becomes enmeshed in it. And that is idol worship, which is likened to the evil inclination. As we rid our homes of chametz, we are ridding ourselves of the evil inclination, of all the drives and what prevents us from being who we strive to be.

So she does this personal ritual before Passover. She says, "As I clean, I compile a list of all my own personal spiritual and psychological hametz, the things that keep me enslaved to my evil inclination, the foibles that I hold on to that keep me from total unencumbered and unfettered freedom, the things that prevent me from being what I would like to or could be." Then, when I burn the chametz on the eve of Pesach, I toss that list into the fire and watch it burn. Hmm.

So from woskow to olitski to ner david, it's basically seasonal cleaning built right into the Jewish calendar. As fall and rain approach, we batten down the hatches and prepare for winter. And now, as spring arrives, we burst open our windows and let the fresh air in. Fresh air float in.

We also have the great Rabbi Marie Kondo. She has her own steps for decluttering what doesn't serve us. She also said she doesn't really have time for that process now that she has kids, but it's a good reminder, right? I was like, oh, that's your whole business model. But I'm sure it was a big, big deal for her to share that with the public. But it's a good reminder that there are so many spiritual technologies available to us. To help us find expansiveness when life feels too narrow.

So here's the question, Jen. What happens if you're not ready? What if the first seder arrives and you're just not ready? What if someone sitting around your table, or however you celebrate, is your chometz? What if it's not until you sit down at your table that you're actually ready to deal with or think about Passover?

These spiritual deadlines are always difficult, end. I feel like for us rabbis, we often have to fake it till we make it. Like, whether we're spiritually ready or not, or in the middle of a huge fight with a loved one, or worried about overcooking the brisket, we have to get on the bima and lead Yom Kippur. We have to put on a costume for Purim. We have to lead model seder after model seder. So that question is real. I think it's true of life cycle events too. Like, what if I don't feel like a bride or a bat mitzvah? Or what if I'm at the funeral of my loved one and I can't feel my grief? What if I don't feel ready to move ahead or claim that identity or moment in time? It's this question of arriving at the moment.

I love this question. And the good news is that even if you're not ready when you sit down, there are 15 steps of the Seder to guide you on your way out of Egypt. And perhaps the things that are preventing you from being present can be a part of your Seder ritual. Last year's Passover episode, we talked about how in every generation we're supposed to see ourselves as if we personally came out of Egypt. So one way to do that in the seder is to bring your full self. As we retell the story, we spend a lot of time on the 10 plagues, and there are many iterations of modern plagues in our world. But what if each time you said a plague and dipped your pinky in the wine to reduce the sweetness of the wine, You also set to yourself a personal plague, like jealousy, anger, resentment.

Some of us wouldn't have any wine or grape juice left after going the personal plague route. But maybe that's the true essence of the ritual, to really feel it. Maybe you also feel grief about the state of the world, and that is your personal chometz. There's been a long-time custom of adding things to the seder plate to symbolize new issues and ideas. What are items you could add to your Seder plate, whether it's the one on a shared communal table or the one in your heart and mind, that represents the things that enslave us personally?

Hmm. I would want to add a symbol to represent the fight for Israeli democracy, a symbol to remind us of the fight against gun violence, a symbol to show support and love for folks who are transgender, and a symbol to represent the need for women's reproductive autonomy.

There's so many options globally and personally. We always talk about how ritual is about scooching towards transformation. Like, there's the preparation and the ritual itself, but sometimes it just takes longer to see its impact. And sometimes visual symbols can really help with that.

There's also the symbolism of opening the door to welcome Elijah. What if that is one more opportunity for you to shake out your chametz one more time, just for good measure?

I feel like it's like taking the doormat and just being like, hey Elijah, one second, shake, shake, shake. So I had a Congaree and Ami rabbinic internship in Mahwah, New Jersey, who imagined this moment of opening the door to welcome Elijah the prophet as a moment where everyone comes to the door at the exact same time. And then standing at their doorway, they see their neighbors standing at their doorways and see one another's faces. And realize, maybe for the first time, that everyone's liberation is bound up together. The people who are grieving see the faces of others who are grieving and maybe feel a little less alone.

And the people who are joyful see the faces of those who are joyful and feel connection. And those grieving and those feeling joy also see one another and acknowledge the breadth and expansiveness of being human. Maybe that is what redemption looks like.

That honestly resonates with me more than cleaning out our cabinet. Although I'm super grateful to my local reverend neighbors who have offered to symbolically buy their Jewish neighbors chametz this year. And also grateful for when they gave me a computer when my computer went for a swim during the great cold brew spill of 2023.

This vision for Elijah and everyone standing at their doorways reminds me of the haftorah that we read for Shabbat HaGadol. Which is the great Shabbat, the one that comes right before Passover starts. And the haftorah comes from the book of the prophet Malachi, and in that text God says, "I will send you the prophet Elijah, who will reconcile parents with children and children with their parents." That somehow, in turning to one another, in seeing one another standing at the doorway, we share the burdens and the joys and the chameitz and the freshness of spring with one another.

It's a beautiful vision.

So if you're just not ready to go out from Egypt, know that you are not alone.

If you have more famaitz than you know what to do with, whether actual food or the swollen sourness of life, know that you're not alone.

We will be waiting to see your faces when you open the door to welcome Elijah.

And we won't tell anyone if you hid all your uneaten Girl Scout cookies in the basement.

To wish you well, we offer you this meditation on freedom by Edie Weinstein.

I free myself from judgments.

I free myself from unreasonable expectations.

I free myself from body criticism.

I free myself from feelings of unworthiness and not enoughness.

I free myself from time constraints, thinking I should be farther along at this stage of life.

I free myself from fear about relationship with a partner.

I free myself from any belief in ill health.

I free myself from thinking I need to sacrifice who I am in order to be loved.

I free myself from financial worries.

I empower myself to live and love fully. Fully and completely.

I empower myself to attract the right people in the ideal circumstances.

I empower myself to use all of my creative gifts and talents in service to the one who planted them there in the first place.

I empower myself to stand up for my beliefs.

I empower myself to accept myself as is.

I empower myself to embrace both my beauty and my boo-boos.

Mm, I empower myself to receive abundance and love in all forms.

I empower myself to take inspired action to see my dreams and visions through to manifestation.

I am my own Moses, my own liberator.

I am my own Miriam. I can dance at the shores of the sea. Happy Passover!

As my grandpa Lou would have said, Zisen Pesach! This episode of the OMFG podcast was brought to you by rabbis Jen Gubitz and Jodi Gordon, editing by Jesse Ulrich, and snark straight from Adonai.